Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

PRIVATE BUSINESS

WEST MIDLANDS CONTY COUNCIL BILL [Lords] (By Order)

Order for consideration, as amended, read.

To be considered upon Thursday next at Seven o'clock.

BRITISH RAILWAYS (No. 2) BILL (By Order)

Order for Second Reading read.

To be read a Second time upon Tuesday next at Seven o'clock.

LONDON TRANSPORT BILL (By Order)

EAST KILBRIDE DISTRICT CONCIL BILL (By Order)

Orders for Second Reading read.

To be read a Second time upon Thursday next.

Oral Answers to Questions — NATIONAL FINANCE

Inflation

Mr. Greville Janner: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is his estimate of the likely rate of inflation for the next six months.

Mr. Winnick: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is the estimated annual rate of inflation from May 1979 to the following May.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Sir Geoffrey Howe): I expect the annual rate of inflation to increase to above 17½ per cent. by the year end before falling to about 13½ per cent. by the third quarter of 1980.

Mr. Janner: Is it not right that, when coming to any such estimate, one must allow for a margin of error of at least 2 per cent., so that it is quite possible that inflation by the end of this year will reach 20 per cent?

Sir G. Howe: There are always margins of error in any forecasts, but the hon. and learned Gentleman would be ill advised to make his presumption in that direction in this case. The House must recognise that the kind of change I have described in my expectation is the kind of change which would have followed from a Budget introduced by the right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey).

Mr. Winnick: Is it not clear that over the next 12 months the rate of inflation will be well above 20 per cent? What possible moral authority have the Government to ask for restraint from working people when the Budget has well rewarded the rich and the privileged, and all forms of price restraint have been abolished by the Government?

Sir G. Howe: The hon. Gentleman should not continue enthusiastically to expect and hope for and, indeed, encourage the worst expectations. He should recognise, as most people in the country do, that the Budget produces very substantial reductions in direct taxation for taxpayers at every level, that it releases


1,300,000 people from the obligation to pay tax, and that for those dependent on social benefits it produces very substantial increases—the largest in money and real terms ever given.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: Does not my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the rate of inflation this winter will reflect to a considerable extent the rate of growth in the money supply 18 months previously and changes in the exchange rate up to six months previously? If that is the case, does it not follow that the figures in the Red Book are really worth very little more than the estimates of Old Moore's Almanack, a cheap production of private enterprise? In those circumstances, what in God's name is the point of publishing it?

Sir G. Howe: My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the impact of the money supply on the likely outlook for inflation. It is right to underline the qualification plainly set out in the Red Book about the very wide margin of error contained in that document.

Mr. Alfred Morris: Even before this further shocking increase in inflation, is the right hon. and learned Gentleman aware that already there have been some tragic victims of his increases in value added tax and the minimum lending rate? Is he aware that Motability, the organisation which exists to help disabled people have cars, has now ceased to trade? Is this not disgraceful and scandalous? What does he intend to do to save an enterprise of which the Prime Minister herself is a patron?

Sir G. Howe: The right hon. Gentleman must understand that the prospect for inflation in the light of what was happening to the money supply and the control of the money supply when this Government came into office was set on a bad course anyway. We inherited a very substantial difficulty. The House knows that Motability was supported by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and, indeed, by right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House. Certainly, the hazards referred to by the right hon. Gentleman are under examination, and we want to examine the prospects as sympathetically as we can.

Mr. Latham: Will my right hon. and learned Friend confirm that in

August 1975, after 16 months of Labour Government, the inflation rate was 26·9 per cent.? Why should any housewife listen to grumbles from the Labour Party in this matter?

Sir G. Howe: My hon. Friend is entirely right to underline the disastrous record of the last Administration. I remind the House yet again of the extent to which this incoming Government inherited substantial difficulties created by the last Administration.

Mr. Healey: Does not the right hon. and learned Gentleman agree that he told us himself last Tuesday that his Budget measures—the increases in indirect taxation, the increase in mortgage rate and the increase in rents, rates and public sector charges as a direct result of the Budget—would increase the retail price index by 5 per cent.? Was it not insane, if he believes that inflation is set on a rising course, to produce a Budget of this nature to finance tax cuts which benefit mainly the better off?

Sir G. Howe: The right hon. Gentleman protests too much and protests in vain. He knows that the direct effects of the Budget did not produce price changes on anything like that scale. More important, he knows that if he was to achieve his own target for the public sector borrowing requirement he would have had to introduce increases in indirect taxation and increases in nationalised industry prices that would have produced at least equivalent increases in prices without any offsetting advantage in the form of lower taxes.

Mr. Rooker: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is the latest rate of inflation as measured by the retail price index.

Mr. Neubert: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is the latest annual rate of inflation.

Mr. Knox: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is the annual rate of inflation.

Sir Geoffrey Howe: The retail price index rose by 10·3 per cent. over the 12 months to May 1979.

Mr. Rooker: Does the Chancellor realise that if the increase continues, as forecast, to 17 per cent. or 18 per cent., the cost of indexing personal allowances, when he comes to draw up his Budget next April, will be more than £2 billion, which exactly matches the extra VAT, or will he adopt, as an excuse, the fact that the Government raised personal allowances more than required this year and use the Lawson part of the Rooker-Wise amendment to get out of their obligations, so imposing a worse burden on working people?

Sir G. Howe: The hon. Gentleman should not make the worst assumptions about the way in which the rate is likely to move. The rest of the Government's policies are designed to secure a reduction in the rate of inflation. I have already indicated the expectation that one can have for a year beyond that. The success of that policy in securing a reduction in inflation, together with a sensible outcome in terms of employment, depends to a considerable extent on the way in which people are prepared to bargain pay responsibly during the year which lies ahead.

Mr. Neubert: While I commend my right hon. and learned Friend for his evident intention not to be deterred from taking the right decisions for the economy by the prospect of a rise in the RPI, may I point out that there remains a serious problem of presentation to the public? Will he consider publishing, in addition to the cost of living index, a standard of living index which would, for example, present the increases in VAT in the perspective of reductions of tax at all levels?

Sir G. Howe: My hon. Friend's point is of course important. It is important for people to understand the offsetting effect of the substantial reductions in personal taxation and the extent to which the change in the retail price index is a change once for all, while those income tax cuts are taking place. We shall give consideration—indeed, we are already doing so—to the suggestion my hon. Friend makes.

Mr. Knox: Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the figure that he has given shows how false were the

claims made in the election campaign by the Labour Party that the then Government had inflation under control? By how much does he expect prices to rise in the next 12 months as a direct consequence of the policies of the former Chancellor of the Exchequer?

Sir G. Howe: My hon. Friend is right to remind the House of that. The former Chancellor had forecast that price inflation could be rising by 13 per cent. now as a result of what had happened so far, and that that could be increased by changes in the price of oil. As I have already said, the plans which would inevitably have been contained in the Budget which, to his relief no doubt, the right hon. Gentleman never had to introduce would have involved an increase in the RPI at least comparable to that which I announced last week.

Mr. Healey: The right hon. and learned Gentleman really cannot get away with that. The fact is that he will spend £2,000 million in the coming year in cutting the standard rate of tax and giving £600 million worth of relief to those on the higher rates. It is because he has to finance that £10,000 million—[HON. MEMBERS: "Ask a question."] Is it not the case that this is the reason why he is increasing the RPI at a stroke by 5 per cent. in his Budget?

Sir G. Howe: The right hon. Gentleman, characteristically, underlines the folly of his own position. The reality about the Budget that he would have had to introduce is that he would have been making increases in indirect taxation to produce these increases in the RPI, without any reductions in the burden of income tax corresponding to those that I have made. The greater part of the reductions go in the improvement of thresholds and the reduction of the basic rate.

Mr. Hordern: Since the most important part of the Financial Statement is that dealing with economic forecasts, and since the forecasts say that past errors should not be treated as a guide for future errors, what is the purpose of publishing these inflation forecasts anyway?

Sir G. Howe: My hon. Friend will recollect that there is a legal obligation to publish the document and those forecasts


in this way. However, I agree with him that the increasing experience about the margin of error of forecasts of that kind casts some doubt on the value of making them.

Mr. Ashley: Since the poor suffer most from inflation, has the right hon. and learned Gentleman's attention been drawn to the statement of the chairman of the Supplementary Benefits Commission, in which he said that people living in poverty will have their standards reduced unless £200 million is found for them? Will he comment on that statement please?

Sir G. Howe: It is for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services to comment on that specific matter, but I remind the right hon. Member that, as a result of the changes announced last week, benefits are being increased by substantial sums and a large number of the poorer lower paid are being taken out of the tax system altogether. No doubt my right hon. Friend will give further consideration in due course to the report produced by the SBC.

National Debt

Mr. David Price: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what was the increase in the National Debt between April 1974 and April 1979; and what is the annual cost of servicing that debt.

The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. John Biffen): Between 31 March 1974 and 31 March 1979, the outstanding National Debt increased by some £46,526 million. The cost of servicing the outstanding National Debt in the last financial year, 1978–79, was £6,458 million. For the current year, 1979–80, the cost is estimated to be £8,150 million.

Mr. Price: Would my right hon. Friend care to indicate what the servicing of that enormous debt means in terms of taxation? Does he not agree that it comes to more than the whole of the cost of income tax and the consequential tax which might be called the Healey head tax and must be ranked along with scutage, Morton's fork, ship money and the window tax as some of the more outrageous impositions placed by bad or evil British Governments upon the people of this benighted country?

Mr. Biffen: If I may be a little more prosaic in answer to my hon. Friend, it is true that the servicing figure of £8,150 million exceeds what is now spent on health and nearly matches what is spent on education.

Mr. Cormack: If it had not been for the financial incontinence of the previous Chancellor, by how much could VAT have been reduced?

Mr. Biffen: That depends upon the incontinence.

Mr. Robert Sheldon: Given that the cost of servicing the debt is so high, is it not true that the 14 per cent. minimum lending rate will not reduce the cost of servicing that debt? Will the Chief Secretary comment on views held in financial circles in this country and elsewhere that the 14 per cent. minimum lending rate is not likely to be the rate for a few weeks but could be the rate for a few months or even longer?

Mr. Biffen: As the right hon. Gentleman knows, no one from this Dispatch Box will postulate when expected changes shall take place in minimum lending rate. He should also know that a 14 per cent. minimum lending rate was a necessity arising from our poisoned inheritance from the previous Administration.

Mileage Allowances (Health Service Workers)

Mr. Hal Miller: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he will review the present arrangements under which nurses, health visitors, midwives, radiographers and others are assessed for tax on their mileage allowances which are reimbursement for expenses incurred in carrying out their duties; and if he will make a statement.

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Nigel Lawson): Nurses, health visitors, midwives and radiographers, like all other employees, are assessed to tax on their mileage allowances only to the extent that these exceed the reimbursement of expenses necessarily incurred in the performance of their duties. I see no reason to review the arrangements recently entered into between the Inland Revenue and the National Health Service as to the tax treatment of these allowances.

Mr. Miller: Will my hon. Friend reflect on the widespread resentment of those working in the Health Service that their mileage allowances, particularly when they are called out at night, should be taxed? Would it not be more sensible to arrange that the mileage allowance should cover expenses? How did the mileage allowance come to include a profit element that the Inland Revenue thought fit to tax? How can that be substantiated, in view of the recent increases in motoring costs?

Mr. Lawson: As I explained in my original answer, there is no special discrimination against health workers. The law applies equally to all workers. The agreement between the Inland Revenue and the National Health Service was that a taxable surplus would normally arise only when fewer than 3,000 miles were travelled. Round figures are negotiated for tax liability in those circumstances. This is meant to assist the workers concerned. If they think that it is wrong and that they would benefit from individual arrangements, they can contest the agreement.

Mr. Michael Morris: Does the Minister accept that members of the Health Service, especially those who go out in the middle of the night, have made a substantial protest over the last year to 18 months since the change was made? Will he have conversations with National Health Service representatives to see if a more satisfactory arrangement can be made?

Mr. Lawson: This is a very complicated question. Taxation of the emergency call-out payment is separate from the taxation of car allowances. The expenses of travelling from home to work, whether in normal hours or during an emergency call-out, do not normally qualify for tax relief because they are regarded as being incurred to put the employee in a position to perform his duties rather than in their performance. In an emergency, to which my hon. Friend refers, when an employee has actually embarked on his duties before starting his journey to work and is then travelling in the performance of those duties, he is entitled to relief for those expenses. A simplified procedure has been negotiated to which I have referred.

I hope that my hon. Friend is now fully satisfied.

National Savings Certificates

Mr. Michael Spicer: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether the Government will reimburse individuals for interest charges incurred as a result of their having to take out loans whilst unable to cash national savings certificates because of industrial action.

Mr. Lawson: I have already made clear that we will honour the commitment of the previous Government to recompense those affected by the industrial action by computer staff at the Department for National Savings. This, of course, includes holders of national savings certificates who may have had to borrow because they were unable to encash the certificates during the strike. The precise terms on which the recompense is to be offered and the necessary administrative arrangements are still under consideration, but I hope to be able to make an announcement soon.

Mr. Spicer: I welcome that reply so far as it goes, but will the Financial Secretary give an assurance that this matter will be treated with the utmost urgency? A lot of people are affected.

Mr. Lawson: I agree entirely with my hon. Friend: I treat this as a serious matter. It is being dealt with with the utmost urgency. The question is extremely complicated, and I hope very much that I shall be able to make an announcement soon. It is important to get it right and to see that justice is done.

Tax yields

Mr. Meacher: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what are the latest figures for the yield of corporation tax and income tax, respectively.

Mr. Lawson: Receipts in 1978–79 were—corporation tax, £3,938 million; income tax, £18,776 million. The estimates for 1979–80, after the Budget changes, are £4,850 million and £19,655 million, respectively.

Mr. Meacher: How can it be right for the average low-paid worker to have to pay about 15 per cent. of his gross income in income tax while in the last company accounting year BP paid literally


nil corporation tax out of profits of £1,800 million and 11 others of the top 20 companies also paid nil corporation tax? What is the hon. Gentleman doing to rectify that massive under-taxation of top companies?

Mr. Lawson: The average rate of tax over trading profits is 24 per cent. for companies as a whole—not nil. However, the hon. Gentleman should realise that the economy would be a great deal healthier and that the living standards of the poor, about whom he professes such concern, would be a great deal better if British companies made bigger profits—if they were more profitable rather than less.

Mr. David Price: Does not my hon. Friend agree that the figures that he has just given prove my point that, if it were not for the "Healey head tax", the Chancellor would have been able to reduce income tax to 16p in the pound and not only to 30p?

Mr. Lawson: I congratulate my hon. Friend on having been called a second time so soon. Once again, he has made a good point.

Mr. Richard Wainwright: Bearing in mind the low and declining rate of growth bequeathed by the previous Government, and the measures in the Budget, when does the Financial Secretary expect the rate for corporation tax to be positively buoyant?

Mr. Lawson: I am not in the business of giving forecasts, but it is certainly our hope that there will be a recovery in corporate profits. I am glad to have the support of the Liberal Party to this end, even if not of the main Opposition party.

Mr. Denzil Davies: The hon. Gentleman says that he is not in the business of giving forecasts. Will he confirm that the 9 per cent. figure for money supply in the Red Book is a target and not just one of the vague forecasts that he seems to like to put in the rest of the Red Book?

Mr. Lawson: I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman raised that. Indeed it is a firm target, and we shall attempt to hit that target.

Mr. Cormack: Can my hon. Friend arrange for every taxpayer to be informed

that a third of his income tax is spent on servicing the debt incurred by the last Government?

Mr. Lawson: My hon. Friend is absolutely right that the last Government succeeded in an event unparalleled in history—getting at the same time a massive depreciation of the currency and an increase in real terms in the National Debt. I do not think that that double had ever been achieved before.

Mr. George Robertson: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what was the total revenue in each of the last four fiscal years from (a) capital gains tax, (b) capital transfer tax, and (c) estate duty, respectively.

Mr. Lawson: Since the answer contains a number of figures, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me if, with permission, I circulate it in the Official Report.

Mr. Robertson: Since I have a good idea that the figures will show that we in this country are still raising a smaller proportion of the total tax take from taxes on capital than is done even in the very un-Socialist United States, will the Treasury consider increasing the amount taken in taxes on capital and reducing taxes on expenditure among the weakest and poorest in the community?

Mr. Lawson: If the hon. Gentleman had already had the figures, I should have been surprised at his asking that question. What he fails to recognise is that capital taxation in this country at the present level, which is very high by international comparisons, is having a damaging effect on enterprise and initiative, and particularly on small businesses, agriculture and our national heritage. This is not, of course, reflected in the absolute figures at present, but we see it reflected in the yield of capital taxes at the end of the day, and the truth is that, because of the transitional arrangements, the full yield of capital transfer tax has not yet been felt. This is why we intend to introduce relieving measures.

Following are the figures:


£ million
1975–76


(a) Capital gains tax
386·7


(b) Capital transfer tax
117·6


(c) Estate duty
212·3







1976–77


(a) Capital gains tax
323·4


(b) Capital transfer tax
259·2


(c) Estate duty
124·4



1977–78


(a) Capital gains tax
339·9


(b) Capital transfer tax
331·2


(c) Estate duty
86·4



1978–79


(a) Capital gains tax
352·9


(b) Capital transfer tax
323·2


(c) Estate duty
46·1

Money Supply

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what was the annualised rate of growth in the money supply, according to the M1 and M3 definitions respectively, in the latest period of three months for which the figures are available; and whether this was in accord with the monetary policy of Her Majesty's Government.

Mr. Lawson: In the three months to mid-May, M1 grew at an annual rate of 12·9 per cent. and £M3 grew at an annual rate of 7·9 per cent. However, in the last six months £M3 had grown at an annual rate of nearly 14 per cent., which was above the upper end of the target range of the previous Government, and there were signs that the rate of growth was increasing. My right hon. and learned Friend accordingly raised MLR to 14 per cent. in order to help bring the rate of growth of £M3 into line with the new target range which has already been referred to of an annual rate of 7 per cent. 11 per cent. for the next 10 months.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: Is it not painfully apparent that the reins of monetary control had slipped from the palsied hands of the right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey)? May I congratulate my right hon. and hon. Friends on vigorously recovering them? Can my hon. Friend assure the House that his right hon. and learned Friend will not be dissuaded by any recidivist neo-Keynesians in Great George Street from his professed intention of publishing rather longer-term objectives for money supply, going on into the next financial year?

Mr. Lawson: I am sure that my right hon. and learned Friend is well able to look after himself when it comes to dealing with recidivist neo-Keynesians or any

one else. The issue of publishing longer-term monetary forecasts raises complicated matters. This point is under review and the idea has not been ruled out.

Mr. Denzil Davies: Since it has been suggested that there has been a certain amount of double counting in the PSBR forecasts and since we have been told that the money supply is now running at 14 per cent., may I ask whether the hon. Gentleman is satisfied that interest rates will not have to go higher to bring the money supply down to the target of 9 per cent. announced by the Chancellor?

Mr. Lawson: My right hon. and learned Friend has pointed out already the unwisdom of making forecasts of the interest rates. The previous Chancellor did this and was proved wrong time after time. We do not intend that to happen. If the right hon. Gentleman is worried about the public sector borrowing requirement and possible double counting—I assure him that there is none—let him look at the public sector financial deficit. He will find there that, as a proportion of GDP, it is projected this year to be at its lowest level for seven years—lower than at any time under the previous Administration.

Mr. Healey: Is the hon. Gentleman rebuking the Governor of the Bank of England for suggesting in his speech to the Leasing Association two days ago that MLR will have to stay at 14 per cent. throughout the summer?

Mr. Lawson: No. I was making no comment on the Governor of the Bank of England whatsoever.

Public Sector Borrowing Requirement

Mr. Jim Marshall: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is the latest estimate for the public sector borrowing requirement.

Mr. Cryer: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is his forecast of the public sector borrowing requirement for 1979–80.

Mr. Biffen: I refer the hon. Members to my right hon. and learned Friend's Budget Statement.

Mr. Marshall: Will the right hon. Gentleman refer to the article written by


his hon. Friend the Financial Secretary headed:
The Economic Perils of Thinking for the Moment
in which I presume the economic policies of the Government are outlined? Is he aware that one of the basic aims put forward in that article is the introduction of a long-term stabilisation programme to defeat inflation and increase public confidence? Can he outline to the House and the country how that proposed scenario fits in with rip-roaring inflation, increasing unemployment, an increasing balance of payments deficit and zero economic growth?

Mr. Biffen: I always pay the closest attention to the views of my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary, certainly to his thinking on long-term economic matters. The public sector borrowing requirement is the centrepiece of the Government's economic policy. We attach the greatest importance to its being reduced from 5½ per cent., expressed as the gross domestic product last year, to 4½ per cent. for the gross domestic product for the year in question. We regard that as being a major part of our attack upon inflation.

Mr. Cryer: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that there will be much hardship as a result of this attempt to cut the PSBR by a savage attack on public expenditure, upon which the Government are about to embark? Would it not be more meaningful if the Government were determined to tax the big multinational corporations properly and so get their yield of corporation tax nearer to the level of income tax yield, at around £20 billion per annum? Does he not agree further that if cuts in public expenditure are required anywhere, our contribution to the Common Market could be one likely area? Will he also contemplate a savage cut in the amount of money spent on defence, which reaches almost £10 billion?

Mr. Biffen: We have always made it clear that we understand that there will be severe strain involved in the public expenditure cuts that have been presented to the House, both at the time of the Budget and in the Gracious Speech. There is no disposition on the Government Benches towards heavier corporate taxation. We believe that a revival of profitability in the private sector is essen-

tial to national economic regeneration. My right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor has made the most robust speeches about the necessity of reducing Britain's net contribution to the European Community. To deal with the hon. Gentleman's fourth point, we have made it clear, and we are happy to stand by our declaration, that we believe that this country's defences need restoring rather than further undermining.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I hope that Ministers will not feel obliged to answer four supplementary questions in future, because they should not be asked in the first place. One supplementary question is the custom in the House, and it is unfair to other hon. Members for an hon. Member to push in questions which amount to his making a speech.

Mr. Emery: Will my right hon. Friend tell the House what policy the Government have decided upon to control foreign borrowing by nationalised industries? Has any directive been given on this, or do the Government wish to encourage a further amount of that type of borrowing?

Mr. Biffen: No directive has been issued.

Mr. Mike Thomas: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of the impact the cuts in the PSBR will have on the low paid? Is he aware further that, on the strength of answers given to me by the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, the taxpayer with £2,000 taxable a year will be better off by less than 5p a week as a result of the last Budget? Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that when we take into account increases in council rents and in mortgage repayments, such a person will be worse off while his standard of living will be cut as a result of the cuts in public expenditure?

Mr. Biffen: It is easy to make the assertion that the standard of living of the lower paid is being cut as a result of the public expenditure cuts, but I have seen no evidence to sustain that assertion

Public Expenditure

Mr. Canavan: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he will now give details of the Government's policy on public expenditure.

Mr. Biffen: I refer the hon. Member to my right hon. and learned Friend's Budget Statement.

Mr. Canavan: What estimate has been made of the effect of the public expenditure cuts on unemployment in view of the reports that the Treasury has secret forecasts of unemployment running at the level of 2 million at the turn of the year, due partly to the savage cutback in public expenditure? Is the Minister afraid to come clean and tell the truth because of the possible social and political repercussions of his Government's disastrous economic policies?

Mr. Biffen: I simply do not believe that it would be possible to forecast with any degree of precision the increase in unemployment that might arise from the package of spending cuts announced at the time of the Budget.

Mr. Budgen: Does my right hon. Friend agree with the economic commentary in yesterday's Bank of England Quarterly Review on page 112, where it is said that sales of public assets are to some extent in competition with sales of gilts? Does my right hon. Friend go on to conclude that sales of public assets could not properly be described as a reduction of the public sector borrowing requirement?

Mr. Biffen: I have not had the benefit of reading the Bank of England Quarterly Review to which my hon. Friend refers, but I would not endorse what is stated there.

Development Land Tax

Mr. Latham: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he will make a statement on his proposals for development land tax.

Mr. Lawson: As I am sure my hon. Friend was glad to see, my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer did so in his Budget Statement.

Mr. Latham: Now that many small transactions will be exempt from this tax, will my hon. Friend turn his attention to the gross overstaffing of the development land tax office, on which there was a critical Inland Revenue report to the Labour Government but on which no action has been taken?

Mr. Lawson: I am well aware of the close interest my hon. Friend has been taking over a long period in the development land tax office. It is too soon to settle the future staffing needs of that office. For one thing, as a result of the removal, by the measures introduced in the Budget, of the major uncertainties that have been hanging over the development land market, I expect that there will be an increase in the number of disposals. We have this matter closely under review.

Mr. Denzil Davies: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that any benefit—and the Opposition dispute that there will be any—which might come to the building industry as a result of cuts in development land tax will be far outweighed by the damage caused by the Budget, especially the public expenditure cuts and the punitive rates of interest?

Mr. Lawson: The right hon. Gentleman characteristically seems to assume that the building and construction industry is concerned solely with the public sector. What he fails to appreciate is that, as a result of the Budget measures and the long-term strategy of the Government, we expect over the coming years a revival in the private sector, which will give a lot of business to builders and to the construction industry generally.

Gross Domestic Product

Mr. Richard Wainwright: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what, at the present time, is the estimated annual rate of growth of gross domestic product.

Sir Geoffrey Howe: The economic forecast published last week in the Financial Statement and Budget Report suggested that gross domestic product in the first half of 1979 was more than 1 per cent. higher than a year earlier.

Mr. Wainwright: In view of that only modest improvement, and in order that enterprising people may see some light at the end of the tunnel, will the Chancellor say in what year he aims to see a substantial upturn in the rate of growth of gross domestic product?

Sir G. Howe: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his emphasis on the need for enterprising people to see some light at the end of the tunnel, since it must be understood plainly that it is beyond the


power of any Government, by expansion or contraction of money supply or demand, to guarantee the delivery of any forecasts of output growth at all. What the Government are seeking to do in the Budget is to change the tax environment, to improve incentives for the enterprising, to whom the hon. Gentleman refers, and to examine and remove regulations and obstructions which stand in the way of enterprise. Only when we secure improvements of that kind in the performance of the supply side of the economy is there any real prospect of expansion of output, prosperity and employment.

Mr. Stoddart: At the Heads of Government meeting now taking place, at which the Prime Minister is in attendance, will the response to the Commission's concern about unemployment and the decline in growth in the EEC countries be to put forward the same ridiculous policies for solving this problem as have been put to the House and the country by this Government?

Sir G. Howe: It is my plain impression from discussions with Finance Ministers in other countries, and it clearly emerged, for example, at the OECD meeting last week, that throughout the world economy attention is focusing increasingly on the need to improve the supply side of the economy. Indeed, the Secretary for the Treasury in the United States, speaking in London last Wednesday, drew attention to the failure in that economy of persistent reliance on short-term demand management as an answer to economic problems and emphasised exactly the same diagnosis and prescription as I gave in my Budget speech the day before.

Mr. Robert Sheldon: But is not the Chancellor aware that one of the most serious consequences of his Budget will be in the investment intentions of manufacturing industry? Since the worrying forecasts that we are now hearing about manufacturing industry's investment intentions give cause for great concern, will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give to industry generally at least the modest assurance that he has no intention whatever of reducing the capital allowances?

Sir G. Howe: The outlook for manufacturing investment depends essentially on the long-term prospect for economic

success and prosperity, and depends therefore upon the measures that I announced in the Budget. I made plain also in my Budget Statement that it would be wrong to contemplate any substantial change in the structure of corporate taxation without consultation, and I have no such intention at present.

Widows (Taxation)

Mr. Dalyell: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what examination he is making of the taxation treatment of working widows.

Mr. Lawson: All widows who are liable to tax will benefit from the very substantial reductions in income tax which my right hon. and learned Friend has proposed in his Budget; but we shall, of course, keep the effects of the tax system on widows under careful review.

Mr. Dalyell: What does "under careful review" mean to the Financial Secretary?

Mr. Lawson: It means under careful review.

Oral Answers to Questions — WISBECH

Mr. Freud: asked the Prime Minister if she will visit Wisbech.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. William Whitelaw): I have been asked to reply.
My right hon. Friend has no plans to visit Wisbech.

Mr. Freud: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that during the election campaign the Conservative candidate for Isle of Ely distributed tens of thousands of leaflets which stated that the right hon. Lady, now Prime Minister, had reaffirmed
her promise to Dr. Stuttaford that a Conservative Government will save the Bowthorpe hospital"?
If the Prime Minister is unable to come to Wisbech, will she at least announce the date of the ministerial reprieve so that celebrations may begin and staff recruitment recommence?

Mr. Whitelaw: In fact, my right hon. Friend said that she would like to see the hospital kept open if possible. My hon. Friend the Minister for Health has said


that we would want to retain Bowthorpe hospital but only if it were practicable and if matters had not gone too far. He is now considering the case in detail. As for Dr. Stuttaford, whose failure to get back to the House I deeply regret, he can well speak for himself.

Mr. Brocklebank-Fowler: Will my right hon. Friend take it that many of my constituents were pleased by the sympathy which the Prime Minister showed towards small hospitals and wish her to urge her right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services to review this decision and to save Bowthorpe hospital, which is a valuable and much-liked local hospital?

Mr. Whitelaw: I can certainly confirm that my right hon. Friend wishes to keep small local hospitals open, and I assure my hon. Friend that I shall convey his remarks to her.

Mr. Ennals: I did visit Wisbech during the course of the election campaign as a result of this squalid Tory vote-catching effort. When the right hon. Lady has the opportunity to visit Wisbech, will she give some explanation to the people there why, after an assurance was given that the National Health Service would not suffer from public expenditure cuts, they now find that, as a result of the increase in VAT and the application of cash limits, their Health Service is being threatened with a 3 per cent. cut in revenue expenditure?

Mr. Whitelaw: I do not accept the right hon. Gentleman's ideas.

Mr. Eldon Griffiths: Will my right hon. Friend convey to the Prime Minister that the time she gains by not visiting Wisbech or Bowthorpe hospital might be better devoted to dealing with the threat now being made to certain hospitals in East Anglia that the National Union of Public Employees will take industrial action against the policy of this Government, endorsed by the British electorate, that we shall not permit a vendetta to be pursued against pay beds? Will he make clear that it would be wholly wrong and against this country's constitutional proprieties that NUPE should do any such thing?

Mr. Whitelaw: I entirely agree that any such action, if it were taken, would be highly regrettable.

Oral Answers to Questions — TUC AND CBI

Mr. Mike Thomas: asked the Prime Minister when last she met the Trades Union Congress.

Mr. Whitelaw: I have been asked to reply.
My right hon. Friend met the general secretary of the TUC on 31 May. She will be meeting the economic committee next Monday.

Mr. Thomas: As the Financial Secretary has confirmed the fact to me in parliamentary answers, will the Prime Minister tell the TUC when she next meets it that what she refused to admit to the House on 14 June in reply to me is true—namely, that no taxpayer earning less than £10,000 a year will benefit from the Budget?

Mr. Whitelaw: I do not accept what the hon. Gentleman says, and I have nothing to add to what my right hon. Friend said previously.

Mr. Adley: Is my right hon. Friend aware that many trade unionists in my constituency, who are not privy to the meetings between members of Her Majesty's Government and the TUC, are none the less anxious to hear proposals from the Government for the introduction of secret ballots and for some curb on secondary picketing? Will he give an assurance that these measures will be put before the House at the earliest possible moment?

Mr. Whitelaw: As my hon. Friend knows, they were promised in the Queen's Speech. I assure him that they will be put before the House at the earliest opportunity.

Mr. Wrigglesworth: When the right hon. Gentleman and members of the Government meet the TUC next time, will they give it further details about the economic forum that is to be established as announced by the Prime Minister on Tuesday? Will the forum be considering the implications of 17½ per cent. price increases and the effect that these will have upon wages? What will it be discussing, and who will be part of it?

Mr. Whitelaw: Whether there should be a forum and what it should discuss


will be among the matters considered at the meeting.

Mr. McCrindle: When my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister next meets the TUC, will she tell it that, while the Government will be prepared to discuss matters with it, as with any other important body which has a responsibility for the economy, as often as is necessary, it was the Government and the Government alone who on 3 May were returned to run the country?

Mr. Whitelaw: Yes, of course. As my hon. Friend knows, the electorate, after years of decline under a Labour Administration, voted for a new start and a new opportunity for Britain, and that is what it is getting.

Mr. Russell Kerr: When does it start?

Mr. Kilroy-Silk: When the Prime Minister meets the economic committee of the TUC, will she explain to it why she used the Budget to launch an attack upon the sick, the poor, the pensioners and the unemployed?

Mr. Whitelaw: Considering many of the provisions in the Budget, including large increases for retirement pensioners, I am amazed by the hon. Gentleman's remarks.

Oral Answers to Questions — MINISTER FOR LONDON

Mr. John Hunt: asked the Prime Minister if she will appoint a Minister for London.

Mr. Whitelaw: I have been asked to reply.
No, Sir.

Mr. Hunt: Modesty precludes me from suggesting any names for the job, but may I ask whether my right hon. Friend agrees that Greater London, which has a population almost as large as Wales and Scotland put together, has especially acute problems in housing, transport and tourism? As London is the capital city, does it not have a special claim for a direct voice at ministerial level?

Mr. Whitelaw: I recognise the problems of London, but I am bound to say as a Member representing a constituency in the North of England that I have always felt that London speaks with a pretty strong voice already.

Mr. Christopher Price: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that London's housing problems are much more acute than those in any other part of the country? Is he aware further that the ability of London local authorities to carry out satisfactory repairs to the housing stock has been made almost impossible by measures in the Budget against local authorities? Is he able to give any comfort to the old and the infirm in my constituency, who under present measures must look forward to another winter with leaking roofs and houses that do not keep out the weather?

Mr. Whitelaw: It seems that the hon. Gentleman is making a strong condemnation of many of the London boroughs that are under Labour control and of the previous Labour Government.

Mr. Thomas Cox: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware, whatever political points he is trying to score, that there are real problems existing in London? Will he pay attention to the comments that are being made by those in industry and commerce in London, who are asking for the very things that the hon. Member for Ravensbourne (Mr. Hunt) has been requesting—namely, the allocation of time in the House for the problems and issues of London to be discussed?

Mr. Whitelaw: The GLC, under Conservative control, is doing an extremely good job. As for discussions in the House, I remind the hon. Gentleman that last week, for example, the House considered giving a Second Reading to the Greater London Council (General Powers) Bill. That provided a perfectly good opportunity to discuss London matters.

Oral Answers to Questions — CHANCELLOR OF THE DUCHY OF LANCASTER

Mr. Dalyell: asked the Prime Minister if she will define the duties of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.

Mr. Whitelaw: I have been asked to reply.
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster has a personal responsibility to the Queen for the management of the Duchy's estates. He appoints some justices of the peace in the north-west of


England. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is also Leader of the House and has responsibility for the arts.

Mr. Dalyell: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman a question of which I gave his office notice in the hope of a considered reply—namely, whether, in the all-party talks, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster will be putting forward proposals for rules of referendums if we are to have referendums in future?

Mr. Whitelaw: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his courtesy in giving me notice of what he intended to ask. I hope that my reply will be regarded as a considered one. The proposed talks are intended to deal with the government of Scotland, although they will have to take account of the wider implications of some suggested improvements. It would be inappropriate to include on the agenda rules for referendums, which would obviously have to apply throughout the United Kingdom.

Mr. Latham: Is my right hon. Friend aware that there has long been strong support in the art world for the attitudes of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster towards the National Land Fund and the need to reform it? May we have the Cabinet's proposals on the matter as soon as possilbe?

Mr. Whitelaw: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for what he says about the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. It will be for my right hon. Friend to bring the matter forward. I have no doubt that he will do so in the near future.

Mr. Maclennan: In view of the pressure from Government Back Benchers, especially from the hon. Member for Ravensbourne (Mr. Hunt), for a Minister for London, will the right hon. Gentleman include the subject of devolution to England and London on the agenda for the inter-party talks?

Mr. Whitelaw: I understand that the talks that have been arranged will be to consider the affairs of Scotland.

Oral Answers to Questions — PRIME MINISTER (ENGAGEMENTS)

Mr. Joseph Dean: asked the Prime Minister if she will list her public engagements for 21 June.

Mr. Whitelaw: I have been asked to reply.
Today my right hon. Friend is attending a meeting of the European Council in Strasbourg.

Mr. Dean: Will the right hon. Gentleman ask his right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to take time off today to consider the effect of the cuts that the Secretary of State for Education and Science has announced in nursery provision and primary school rebuilding programmes, bearing in mind that my constituency still has to suffer primary schools that are over 100 years old, to ascertain whether there can be any alteration of the savage cuts and the adverse effects that they will have?

Mr. Whitelaw: I shall ensure that the hon. Gentleman's remarks are conveyed to my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science. My right hon. Friend will carefully consider what he has said.

Mr. Strang: Will the right hon. Gentleman take the opportunity to deny reports coming from Brussels that his right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food is preparing the ground for a sell-out in the current EEC farm price negotiations? Does he agree that the policy of his right hon. Friend the Prime Minister of securing a real reduction in Britain's disproportionate contribution to the EEC budget will be undermined if the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food does not insist on the previous Labour Government's policy of a complete EEC common farm price freeze?

Mr. Whitelaw: I do not regard it as possible in any circumstances that my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food will ever be engaged in a sell-out. Obviously my right hon. Friend will make a statement to the House when he returns. I ask the hon. Gentleman to await that statement.

Mr. Concannon: Bearing in mind the Prime Minister's known sympathy with efforts to try to keep open hospitals, will the right hon. Gentleman draw to her attention the Adjournment debate that took place on Monday evening? As the right hon. Lady cannot go to Wisbech, will she find time to come to Mansfield


to help me keep open two or three local hospitals?

Mr. Whitelaw: My right hon. Friend will not be able to go to Mansfield on Monday.

Mr. Concannon: Why not?

Mr. Whitelaw: I understand that she will be making a statement about her visit to Strasbourg. As the House will know, she is leaving the United Kingdom on Tuesday to attend a summit meeting in Tokyo.

Miss Richardson: Will the right hon. Gentleman ask his right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, when she returns from Strasbourg, to pop into her local launderette with her weekly wash, where she will find that because of VAT being increased to 15 per cent. the cost of using a machine has increased by 10p? Will he ask her to bear in mind that launderettes are used by 2½ million consumers who, generally speaking, are one-parent families and poorer families who cannot afford washing machines?

Mr. Whitelaw: Without endorsing what the hon. Lady said, I shall certainly ensure that her comments are passed on to my right hon. Friend.

Mr. Gummer: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Prime Minister is more likely to get a good deal for Britain in the Common Market because she demonstrated her support of the European Community—more so than her predecessor, who showed himself unwilling to stand up for our place in Europe?

Mr. Whitelaw: The position of the Government on Europe is widely respected and regarded throughout the European Community.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Mr. James Callaghan: Will the Leader of the House state the business for next week?

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Norman St. John-Stevas): Yes, Sir. The business for next week will be as follows:
MONDAY 25 JUNE—Debate on the motion on Select Committees related to Government Departments.
Motion on the Industrial Training Levy (Engineering) Order.
TUESDAY 26 JUNE—Motions on the Wales Act 1978 (Repeal) Order and on the Select Committee on Welsh Affairs.
Motion on the Iron Casting Industry (Scientific Research Levy) (Amendment) Order.
At seven o'clock, the Chairman of Ways and Means has named opposed private business for consideration.
WEDNESDAY 27 JUNE—Second Reading of the Finance Bill.
Motions on the Pool Competitions Act 1971 (Continuance) Order and on the Social Security Revaluation of Earnings Factors Order.
THURSDAY 28 JUNE—Motion on the Army, Air Force and Naval Discipline Acts (Continuation) Order.
At seven o'clock, the Chairman of Ways and Means has named opposed private business for consideration.
FRIDAY 29 JUNE—Proceedings on the Pensioners' Payments and Social Security Bill.
Debate on the multilateral trade negotiations, on a motion for the Adjournment.
MONDAY 2 JULY—Motions on the Northern Ireland Act 1974 (Interim Period Extension) Order and on the Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act 1978 (Continuance) Order.

Mr. Callaghan: I note that Friday's business will be the proceedings on the Pensioners' Payments and Social Security Bill. We have not yet been able to see a copy of the Bill. May I have an assurance from the Leader of the House that


it will be concerned only with the increase in pensions and not with the miserable proposal to take away the right to increase them by reference to earnings increases as opposed to price increases?

Mr. St. John-Stevas: Although dissenting from the right hon. Gentleman's adjective, I give that assurance.

Mr. Peter Bottomley: Do I understand that the debate on the pay of Members of Parliament will be taken in more than one week's time, so that the Government may have time in which to reconsider whatever decision will be announced here in a few minutes?

Mr. St. John-Stevas: We shall take that into consideration.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: Does the Leader of the House expect that we shall have the usual facility of the Official Report next week?

Mr. St. John-Stevas: There are some troubles in printing the reports of the proceedings of the House. We are doing what we can to see that those are resolved. In these delicate matters it is best to say as little as possible at a moment like this. However, I have expectations and hopes for next week.

Mr. Jay: When shall we have a report from the Minister of Agriculture on his activities in Brussels this week?

Mr. St. John-Stevas: My right hon. Friend will report to the House as soon as he returns.

Mr. Eldon Griffiths: As the hay and pea harvests are now starting, and farmers are encountering shortages of diesel fuel, will my right hon. Friend make representations to the Secretary of State for Energy to the effect that another statement on the availability of diesel fuel for tractors would be welcome to many Members of Parliament representing agricultural constituencies?

Mr. St. John-Stevas: I shall certainly convey that important point to my right hon. Friend. He is keeping the situation under continuous review.

Mr. William Hamilton: Will the right hon. Gentleman say whether the debate on Monday will be open-ended?

Mr. St. John-Stevas: It is the intention that the debate on Monday will come to an end at 10 o'clock, whereupon all the votes on the amendments that have been selected by Mr. Speaker will be taken.

Mr. Renton: I am pleased to hear that there will be a debate on multilateral trade negotiations next Friday. Will the Leader of the House ensure that there is adequate time for that? It would be unsatisfactory if only half an hour were available for debating that important subject.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: I have considerable sympathy with the point made by my hon. Friend. I cannot give a categorical assurance in those terms. The length of the debate that occurs before the multilateral trade debate is not within my control. Unless there is time for a debate of approximately two hours, after the proceedings on the Pensioners' Payments and Social Security Bill, it is my intention that the House should proceed to the normal half-hour Adjournment debate.

Mr. Kaufman: As a result of the culpable negligence of the Secretary of State for Industry in failing to lay the necessary orders, the shipbuilding redundancy payments scheme will lapse on Saturday of next week. That will cause great uncertainty among shipbuilding workers. Will the right hon. Gentleman give a categorical assurance that the orders will be laid as soon as possible and that when they are laid they will be made retrospective so that there will be no gap in benefit?

Mr. St. John-Stevas: The right hon. Gentleman has been his usual agile self. He raised a point and then answered it. The effects of the orders will be retroactive, so that the business about which the right hon. Gentleman is concerned will not be in jeopardy.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: As the Leader of the House called the Select Committee reforms to be put to the House on Monday the greatest reforms for 100 years, and as there are five pages of amendments, surely he cannot stop the debate at 10 o'clock.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: That is the present intention. There are large numbers of votes, subject to Mr. Speaker, to be taken. I do not think it desirable that the House should take those votes and make those


most important decisions at a late hour. However, if it is the general wish of hon. Members that we revise the arrangements and take the votes at a later hour, I shall listen to the representations.

Mr. Dalyell: At business questions a fortnight ago the Leader of the House promised to look at the system of ticket allocation. At 3 o'clock the Visitors' Gallery is usually almost half empty. Has the right hon. Gentleman been able to consider the situation?

Mr. St. John-Stevas: Today must be unusual. Perhaps the Gallery filled up rapidly today.
I will consider the hon. Gentleman's point. However, now that the Services Committee has been appointed, this will be an early item on its agenda. That is the appropriate body to follow up the hon. Gentleman's suggestion.

Sir Derek Walker-Smith: If further time is required in which to debate these important matters on Monday, would not it be better to follow the precedent of the previous procedure debate and extend it into a two-day debate?

Mr. St. John-Stevas: The fact that there was that two-day debate should be taken into consideration when we debate the issue next. What is most important now is not steamrollering through measures and further debate but the opportunity to take decisons.

Mr. Alfred Morris: Is the Leader of the House aware of all the humane work of Motability, which exists to provide cars for severely disabled people? Is he also aware that Motability, of which the Prime Minister is a patron, ceased to trade as a result of the increases in VAT and MLR? This is an important matter. Will the Leader of the House ensure that we shall have a statement next week either from the Chancellor of the Exchequer or from the Secretary of State for Social Services to inform us what the Government intend to do to help this enterprise?

Mr. St. John-Stevas: I cannot guarantee a statement. However, I shall certainly ask my right hon. Friend to consider this matter. I shall be in communication with the right hon. Gentleman, as I know that he is an expert on it.

Dr. McDonald: Before the Government take any measures to curtail employees' job protection rights, details of which are at present circulating among trade unions, will the right hon. Gentleman guarantee a full debate on the matter?

Mr. St. John-Stevas: I shall certainly look into the suggestion made by the hon. Lady, but the time for debate on a whole variety of subjects is becoming increasingly limited.

Mr. Ashley: Is the Leader of the House aware of the serious and ominous warning by the chairman of the Supplementary Benefits Commission that the standard of living of the poorest will fall unless £200 million is urgently found, and that the Chancellor this afternoon gave a pedantic, point-scoring, party political answer to a question on this matter? Can we discuss this matter next week?

Mr. St. John-Stevas: I gather from what the right hon. Gentleman said that my right hon. and learned Friend gave him an effective reply. I shall certainly look into the question, but I cannot guarantee a debate next week.

Mr. Speaker: I propose to call those hon. Members who have been standing, if they will be brief. If not, we shall have to move on.

Mr. Canavan: Will the Government provide time for a debate on early-day motion No. 57 to allow the House to come to a decision on the outrageous proposals of the Secretary of State for Scotland to allow the SNP-controlled district council of Cumbernauld and Kilsyth to go ahead with a savage rent increase of 40 per cent.?
[That an humble address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Housing (Limitation of Rent Income Increases) (Cumbernauld and Kilsyth District) (Scotland) Revocation Order 1979 (S.I., 1979, No. 669), dated 13th June 1979, a copy of which was laid before this House on 20th June, be annulled.]
This would be an unwarranted attack on the living standards of thousands of my constituents.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: I appreciate the hon. Gentleman's concern for his constituents. I suggest that we should have discussions through the usual channels


about the possibility of finding time for a debate on the subject.

Mr. Field: Given that this week we expect a report on pay for Members of Parliament, would the right hon. Gentleman also find time, before Parliament goes into recess, for a debate on the Supplementary Benefits Commission review of Government proposals to reform the benefit system for the 5 million poor of this country? Would he go further and express the wish that as many Members attend that debate as attend the debate on the pay of Members of Parliament?

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member must not argue a case now. He must ask a question.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that point. The report on salaries for Members of Parliament and Ministers has already been published. I fully agree that we must consider this report not in isolation but in relation to social needs of others in the community. I shall consider the suggestion that the hon. Member made.

Mr. Cryer: Will the Leader of the House consider giving time to debating two reports that have been placed in the Vote Office and have been published? They are Department of Trade reports, one on Keyser Ullmann Limited and the extraordinary dealings of that company. Can the right hon. Gentleman assure the House that he will give serious consideration to allowing the House to debate this important report, stemming as it does from the property speculation period which looks as though it will raise its head again? Can the right hon. Gentleman assure the House that he is not involved in any kind of cover-up?

Mr. St. John-Stevas: I certainly give the assurance that I am not involved in any sort of cover-up. I have nothing to cover up and I would not be very good at that sort of operation if I tried it. The report on Keyser Ullmann is a matter that is being considered by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade.

Mr. Rooker: With regard to the second motion on Monday, if the Leader of the House intends to shut down business at 10 o'clock, will that be only on the motion

to set up Select Committees? What about the second motion on the Committee of Selection? Will we have proper time to debate that?

Mr. St. John-Stevas: I hope that it will be for the convenience of the House if the substance of all these matters is debated together. The votes will then be taken individually on the amendments and the motions which Mr. Speaker selects. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."]

Mr. Thomas Cox: Is the Leader of the House aware that the uncertainty about the date when the Summer Recess commences presents real problems to many hon. Members, especially those with young families? When does he think that he may be able to give this year's date?

Mr. St. John-Stevas: I am aware of the importance of that point, particularly for Members who have young children and who need to make plans. I cannot give any undertaking, but I hope that we shall rise at about the usual time.

Mr. Stoddart: May I press the right hon. Gentleman further regarding Monday's debate and put it to him that it really is not good enough to have a one-day debate on this important subject, bearing in mind that the debate that we had previously was in the old Parliament, and was a debate on principle? In this Parliament there are many new Members, who may wish to express their view. Also, we have many amendments that are worthy of proper debate and consideration.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: I am aware of the importance of the point that the hon. Gentleman raised, and that this is indeed a new Parliament. However, it is essential to arrive at an early decision on these matters so that the House can proceed with the appointment of Committees. I shall certainly consider the point that the hon. Gentleman raised.

Mr. James Callaghan: I am grateful to the Leader of the House for saying that he will consider this matter. It must be quite clear to him that there is a lot of dissatisfaction with his present proposal. Therefore, perhaps the usual channels could be used to discuss whether we should debate these issues for two days and take a decision at the end of the second day. I fully accept that we could not have a ragged debate on every amendment, but the right hon. Gentleman might


get himself into a bit of trouble, because people will be entitled to speak on amendments if they are moved, and it is important that we should come to an agreement to deal with this matter in an orderly way and reach decisions at the end of the second day.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: I respond to that suggestion by the Leader of the Opposition in the spirit in which it was offered. We shall discuss the matter through the usual channels.

Mr. Kilroy-Silk: Can the Leader of the House say when legislation will be brought before the House to fulfil the commitment made in the Queen's Speech to repeal section 2 of the Official Secrets Act, and whether that will be coupled with legislation on an official freedom of information Act?

Mr. St. John-Stevas: We shall certainly have an opportunity, at an early date—though I cannot guarantee that it will be before the Summer Recess—to debate the important matters to which the hon. Gentleman referred.

MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT AND MINISTERS (PAY)

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Norman St. John-Stevas): The Top Salaries Review Body, under the chairmanship of Lord Boyle, submitted to the Prime Minister on 11 June its twelfth report, which deals with the pay of Members of Parliament, Ministers and office holders of the House of Lords, and with certain allowances. The Government are most grateful to Lord Boyle and his colleagues for their thorough review and clear recommendations. The report was published today and copies are available in the Vote Office.
The Review Body draws attention to the fact that the parliamentary salary has not been brought properly up to date for seven years. It recommends a revised figure of £12,000 with effect from the due date of 13 June 1979. It also recommends that the parliamentary salary of Ministers and other paid office holders who are Members of the House of Commons should be increased from their present level to £7,000. The Review Body makes a series of detailed recommendations about the pay of Ministers and of office holders, of which the most significant are an increase in the pay of Cabinet Ministers from £14,300 to £25,000, and of Parliamentary Secretaries from £6,050 to £13,000, excluding in both cases the relevant part of their parliamentary salary. The other increases it proposes are set out clearly in the report. These increases are large, although this is in part the result of action taken by previous Governments in holding back the recommended rates in earlier reviews.
The Government accept the sums recommended. However, both sides of the House will recognise that it would be entirely wrong if we in this House were to treat ourselves more favourably than others. We have therefore decided to recommend to the House that the full parliamentary increases should not be brought in immediately, but in three equal stages, the first in the present month, the second in June 1980 and the third in June 1981. That is over a two-year period—[HON. MEMBERS: "Three years."]—and not, as reported in some newspapers, a three-year one.
The Government also propose that the full recommended salary rates should be adopted for pension purposes from the appropriate date this summer. This, too, follows the treatment agreed for other groups covered by the Review Body.
The Review Body also recommends increases in the secretarial allowance for Members of Parliament from £4,200 to £4,600 as an interim measure, pending a final recommendation in the second part of its report, which is due shortly. It proposes increases in the peers' expenses allowance, together with certain changes in the definition of eligible expenditure.
The Government propose that the increases in allowances, including peers' expenses allowances, should be introduced in full immediately. The Government have asked the Review Body to consider urgently the question of secretarial and other necessary expenses incurred by Ministers and other office holders in the House of Lords in the course of their parliamentary duties.
The Review Body considered how its recommended salaries should be kept up to date. Its view was that for Members of Parliament and for Ministers alike, the proper course is regular, independent review. It recognised, however, the practical advantage of finding a suitable way of keeping the salary of Members up to date between reviews and described in detail the comparative advantages and disadvantages of some of the different forms of link that had been suggested to it. This is a difficult issue and there are arguments for and against a link of this kind. The Government prefer, therefore, to reserve judgment until we have had further opportunities to take account of the views of the House.
The rates recommended by the TSRB for the Prime Minister and the Lord Chancellor are, as in the past, higher than those for other Cabinet Ministers. The Prime Minister is unable to be in the House today because she is attending the European Council in Strasbourg. She has, however, authorised me to say that, while she and the Lord Chancellor have agreed that the proposed rates are appropriate for their respective offices and should apply after the next election, they have decided not to accept any increase which would put their ministerial salary above the amount recommended for their

Cabinet colleagues. Consequently, they will take no increase in ministerial salary until 1981. They have decided to take this course on the clear understanding that all other ministerial increases are accepted, subject only to staging.
The House will have an early opportunity to debate and decide upon these matters.

Mr. Foot: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman, first, what consultations he had, before the Government decided to make these recommendations, with other parties in the House and representatives of Back Benchers who have made representations on these matters over a number of years? What were those consultations and what was their outcome?
Will the right hon. Gentleman also take account of the fact that one of the matters that the House will wish to discuss is the question of the linkage of Members' salaries, as has been proposed previously? Does he recall, as I am sure the House recalls, that the House of Commons itself passed a motion on this matter some years ago, and that the previous Government recommended to the Review Body that it should take special account of that resolution and the recommendation? Therefore, will not the Government come forward with a recommendation on that subject after we have been able to consider it?
Will the right hon. Gentleman also take account of the fact that many of us do not accept for a moment the statement that he makes that what he is proposing about phasing is treating Members of Parliament equally favourably with others, because a very different treatment has been proposed by the present Government for dealing with other questions?
Will the right hon. Gentleman also take account of the fact that the House of Commons now has to decide the matter—it may be that in future we should have some system of linkage, and many of us believe that that would be the right course—and it may be that the House of Commons will wish to insist that the Boyle recommendations should be carried out—not merely the general recommendations but also the recommendations about the phasing, which for some reason the Government apparently have rejected?

Mr. St. John-Stevas: With great respect to the right hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Foot), I must say that on the question of consultations he has got his remarks into the wrong context. The context of all our discussions is this House. We have the present report before us, thanks to the efforts of the Back Benchers of the House, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Taunton (Mr. du Cann) and the former chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party, Mr. Cledwyn Hughes. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to the work that they did. When the Review Body, appointed as a result of their efforts, reported, the Government's duty was to take a view. We have done so.
As a matter of proper courtesy, the Prime Minister conveyed the Government's proposals in advance to the right hon. Gentleman. I did so myself to the leaders of the various minority parties in the House. No doubt the Leader of the Opposition will express the Opposition view and supplement anything that has been said by the right hon. Member for Ebbw Vale. But I must stress that this is not a matter for consultations in the sense implied by the right hon. Member for Ebbw Vale. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why not?"] Because this is not a matter to be settled by discussion through the usual channels; it is a matter to be settled through and by decision of the House of Commons.
The right hon. Gentleman referred, secondly, to the question of the linkage of salaries in this House to some other criterion. This is an extremely complex question, because it raises social questions of other people's standing and their needs throughout the country. We have to decide what Members' salaries should be linked to. The Boyle report recommended against any form of linkage [HON. MEMBERS: "It did not."] Yes, it did, but it recognised that there might be political reasons, and so on, why a Government might have to adopt this course, and it recommended links with an index, the new earnings review. But that is quite a different link from that suggested by the House of Commons itself when it last discussed this matter.
That conflict alone should show the House that it is a difficult issue and cannot be decided within a few days of the receipt of the report. Having taken

account of all the considerations and debated the issues, it is for the House to reach a decision.
The right hon. Member for Ebbw Vale said that different people had been differently treated by the Government. That is not true as far as the three review bodies are concerned. With the exception of the police and defence forces, all the salary increases recommended by those bodies have been spread over two years.

Mr. Foot: Of course I am not suggesting that the matter should be settled by consultations through the usual channels or with representative bodies of Back Bench opinion. I am suggesting that if if only the right hon. Gentleman had taken the same course as previous Governments he might not have come forward with recommendations that the House will regard as unfair to hon. Members.

Mr. St. John-Stevas:: I can only express my disagreement with the right hon. Gentleman.

Mr. du Cann: I agree with my right hon. Friend that such decisions ultimately must be for the House, but will he, as Leader, follow the example of his predecessor which led to the establishment of Boyle and be good enough, before we discuss the matter, to receive representations about the numerous issues that flow from his statement and that have given obvious concern to us all? Phasing is one of those issues. Secondly, and more important, is the need to discover a method by which the British House of Commons can be saved from such embarrassments in future. Finally, will my right hon. Friend explain why we read about these matters in the newspapers or hear about them on the radio before hon. Members are themselves informed?

Mr. St. John-Stevas: We take all the precautions that we can to ensure that leaks do not occur, but unfortunately they happen from time to time. I cannot say where they came from. I certainly regret the leaking of frequently inaccurate information before issues are brought before this House.
I am in the greatest sympathy with my right hon. Friend's second point. These matters are embarrassing to all hon. Members and should be dealt with in a


dignified and reasonable manner. I shall be grateful for representations from my right hon. Friend and other hon. Members on that.

Mr. David Steel: Is the Leader of the House aware that I was one of those who accepted, in the 1975 Division, that we should reject the recommendations of Boyle and accept a lower salary? With the benefit of hindsight, I think that that decision was wrong. Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that Boyle put in italics the point that our salaries now—four years later—are still lower than was recommended four years ago? Will he note that Boyle specifically said that if there were to be staging it should be done in two stages by no later than June 1980?
Will the right hon. Gentleman assure us that in the debate we shall have the opportunity to vote for that option? Finally, will he recall specifically that in 1975 the House actually had a vote and decided that it was in favour of the principle of linking? It urged that that be done by the new Government within three months of the election, and we regarded that as binding on whichever Government came to power.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: I agree that salaries of Members of Parliament—and even more of Ministers—have fallen dramatically behind. That was due to the anomaly of the last decision not to implement the £8,000 recommendation, which, as the right hon. Gentleman candidly admitted, he supported. That is the difference between this recommendation of the Government and that on the previous occasion. We have accepted that figure, but have said that it should be phased—[HON. MEMBERS: "Three years."]—No, it is not three years. It is two years. We have said that it should be phased over the period that I have outlined.
It is the Government's duty to see that justice is done to hon. Members. It is equally the duty of the Government in particular and the Leader of the House to see that our proposals do not undermine the position of this House in the country. This House rests ultimately on the good will and respect of the electorate. We should forfeit that respect if we treated ourselves more favourably than other groups in society.
Whatever propositions the Government put forward on these matters, it is for the House, having considered carefully the issues on a free vote, to decide what should be done.

Mr. James Callaghan: I am grateful for the Prime Minister's courtesy in giving me prior information. As far as I know, I am not responsible for the leak. I should have preferred some consultation instead of just being asked to go and hear the Government's decision. However, I make no further point on that.
Our Government and the Government before us must accept responsibility for the position in which the House and hon. Members find themselves. We should not seek to make party advantage out of that—and so far no one has done so.
Boyle is independent and comprises a number of people who have made recommendations for other groups. That is precisely to avoid the embarrassment to which the right hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. du Cann) refers. The way to avoid that embarrassment and the invidious fact that hon. Members may feel that they have to vote against the Government to increase their salaries is to accept the Boyle report.
Boyle proposed initially—and it is clear that that was his real view—that because hon. Members had fallen so far behind there should not be staging. He then concluded that it would be right to stage in such a way that half should be paid on 1 June 1979 and the remainder on 1 June 1980 or, if linkage or updating was introduced, that the second instalment should be paid in November 1980.
The right hon. Gentleman has seen the turbulence in the House. Speaking for myself, I believe that there would be overwhelming support in the House for the proposition that Boyle should be accepted in one of those two forms. If that were so, both sides of the House would have to accept equal responsibility for what was done. We should have to account for ourselves to our electors and constituents. Most of us would have no difficulty in that, in view of the past record on the matter.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: I am grateful to the Leader of the Opposition for that constructive intervention. We have accepted the principal recommendation of Lord Boyle's report that the salaries of


Members of Parliament should be raised to £12,000. It is true that the report recommended against staging, but, recognising certain political difficulties, it went on to suggest a form of staging as a reluctant alternative. I have outlined to the House why that time scale is not acceptable to the Government. The House must now consider the matter and see whether it takes a different view.
The Leader of the Opposition said that we must follow the Boyle report on linkage. If we do, it means that we must come out against linkage. But again, in a second thought, the Boyle report recommended linkage with an index. This is a complex matter, and the House has made another recommendation. However, I assure the House that in this matter the House of Commons is sovereign. If the House, by whatever means, indicates clearly that it wants a particular form of linkage after it has had time to reflect on the issues, of course the Government will accept that decision.

Mr. Callaghan: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for indicating that this would be a matter for individual hon. Members to take their decisions upon, but will he please reconsider the issue and not put us in the position of saying that we must differ from the Government on this matter? We do not necessarily wish to differ from the Government. Instead of hon. Members reconsidering the matter, will the Government, who have had no previous consultations, take the matter back and reconsider it to see whether, on the basis of the arguments in Boyle and on the basis of the expression of the feeling in the House this afternoon, they cannot come forward with a resolution based on Boyle? Then, if hon. Members disagree and want to take a more restricted view, they may vote against that proposition. I suggest that the Government should reconsider the matter, bring forward Boyle and then let the House, in its sovereign responsibility, take a decision on that.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: The Leader of the Opposition has had a full response from myself on the essential points. I have said that the Government will accept the decision of this House. That is the major issue. How this recommendation on linkage comes forward is a minor matter, and there are a number of ways in which it can be pursued.

Mr. Emery: Does my right hon. Friend accept that this was a very difficult statement to make and that it is obvious from the submissions that have been put to him that a large number of hon. Members believe that Members of Parliament deserve to be paid the full amount that has been recommended by Boyle? However, if linkage were to be put into that recommendation, I believe that hon. Members would be more than willing to accept the staging. Without the matter of linking, the acceptance of the staging may well mean that at the end of three years Members of Parliament would again be 30 per cent. or 40 per cent. out of kilter with the rest of the economy. Therefore, I believe that it is important that if linkage is put in in the manner suggested by Boyle it will ensure that the Government obtain staging, which they feel is necessary.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: I do not necessarily agree with everything that my hon. Friend said. However, he made a very important and constructive contribution to what I hope all Members will recognise is an extremely difficult situation to resolve. I shall take full account of that consideration, along with others that are made in the course of these questions.

Mr. Molyneaux: As there does not appear to be any shortage of volunteers to come to this place, can the hardship really be as great as we are led to believe? Secondly, does the Leader of the House agree that the status and standing of, and respect for, Members of Parliament would be further diminished if we were to award ourselves, from public funds, vast immediate increases at a time when we are preaching restraint to others?

Mr. St. John-Stevas: I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that contribution. Of course it is a privilege to serve as a Member of this House. I accept that. I accept also that labourers are worthy of their hire. I accept also the point that the hon. Gentleman made that we must take account of feeling and opinion in the country, which is not always the same as the opinion expressed by reporters and newspaper editorials.

Several Hon.: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. May I appeal to hon. Members not to argue the case but


to ask a question? I must be mindful that a half-day Supply debate follows and hon. Members are deeply interested in it. That debate will end at 7 pm. I shall include as many hon. Members as I can.

Sir Derek Walker-Smith: Is not my right hon. Friend, like Clive of old, astonished at his own moderation? Is it not a fact that assistant secretaries in the Civil Service—not a very exalted grade—with whom it has been suggested Members of Parliament might be linked for pay purposes, will receive an increase from about £13,000 to £17,000, or perhaps £18,000 taking account of the London weighting allowance, to take effect no later than 1 January? Will not my right hon. Friend reconsider the long phasing proposed for Members' pay? With great respect, I do not agree with his assessment of the public's reaction. Will he do his best to make clear to the public, in which he will be assisted by hon. Members of this House, that this is at best a tardy and partial act of justice?

Mr. St. John-Stevas: I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend for pointing out in a practical and restrained way one of the difficulties of linkage. If we had a straight linkage of the kind that the House wished, we would be advancing the salary far beyond £12,000 to the ultimate £17,000 to which my right hon. and learned Friend has referred. We must avoid that. I am extremely grateful to the Leader of the Opposition for the statesmanlike way in which he approached this difficult matter. We must recognise that we are in a difficult situation and we must resolve it in accordance with justice to Members and the good standing of this House in the country.

Mr. Mike Thomas: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that in paragraph 21 of the Boyle report it is recommended not only that staging, which Boyle was basically against, should be completed by June 1980, but also, if staging were contemplated, that the increase in Members' salaries should be accordingly updated in the intervening period? Will he give a firm commitment that in the event of any staging—I do not concede that the House will accept that—he will suitably update the pay in the interim?

Mr. St. John-Stevas: I must point out that the hon. Member's argument, and, indeed, the argument of Lord Boyle's report, would be absolutely true if we were living in an abstract world of logic and justice. But, in fact, we are not. We are returned here by our constituents, who have great financial problems and who are looking to us to be fair to ourselves, but also to set an example to others.

Mr. William Clark: Does my right hon. Friend agree that, whether it was the fault of the previous Government or the Government before that, it is never the right time to increase the salaries of Members of Parliament? This is the dilemma that any Government face. Will my right hon. Friend give an assurance—as there is a lot of feeling about this matter on all sides of the House—that when the issue is debated in the House, if the House decides that phasing is not on and that the £12,000 should come immediately, and, indeed, that there should be some form of linkage, the Government will then accept the decision of the House and not put the matter to any other committee?

Mr. St. John-Stevas: I have already made it clear that the Government will be bound by the decision of this House. Members must consider not only their interests but the long-term interests of the House as a corporate body. We are not here solely for ourselves; we are here as part of this House of Commons, representative of the nation. We must consider both sides of the coin in order to reach a just and reasonable solution that is acceptable to the country.

Mr. Ashley: As the Donnison recommendations were published before the Boyle report, may we take it that this House will discuss those recommendations, on poor people's pay, before the report relating to the pay of hon. Members?

Mr. St. John-Stevas: I cannot give that undertaking, but I welcome the point made by the right hon. Gentleman in drawing attention to the social and economic condition of the entire country of which we are a part.

Mr. George Gardiner: I am sure that my right hon. Friend will agree that Members of this House have for a long


time received adjustment of their salaries towards the end of the annual pay review. Therefore, does he accept that an award that is paid in three stages, the last stage of which is in June 1981, is a three-stage rather than a two-stage payment? For the enlightenment of the House, will he point to any other occupational group which has had its pay award phased over a similarly long period?

Mr. St. John-Stevas: If I may correct my hon. Friend, I believe that there is a difference between the staging and the period over which it is staged. Before there is a great storm again, I remind the House that this is a three-stage award over a two-year period. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] I know that none of us in this House is a professor of mathematics, but if the first stage of the award is made on 13 June 1979 and the last stage is made in June 1981, the period is two years.
Let me give my hon. Friend other examples of those who have had similar three-stage awards over a two-year period—if I may dare use those offending words again. I refer to civil servants, senior members of the Armed Forces, the judiciary, the senior managers of the nationalised industries who were referred to the Top Salaries Review Body, and the doctors and dentists who were referred to that body. The only exception was the reference of the Armed Forces and the police. Therefore, it is against that background of principle that this recommendation is made.

Mr. Ashton: Has the right hon. Gentleman seen that part of the Boyle report which says that since the last Boyle report in 1975, which was not implemented, the national average wage has risen by 60 per cent. when the pay of Members of Parliament has risen by only 17 per cent.? Is it not, in all fairness, time that we caught up?

Mr. St. John-Stevas: That is a most telling figure, and I hope that it will be noted by those who comment on and publicise this matter. Indeed, if the increase that has been reported by Lord Boyle's committee had been based on the pension figure of £8,000, as uprated, the increase proposed today would be 28 per cent. That figure, taken with the figure given by the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Ashton), gives a reason-

able picture of the situation. We have accepted a £5,000 rise. I do not think that it would have been acceptable if we had paid ourselves that all at once.

Mr. James Callaghan: I apologise for intervening again, but may I put a clear question to the right hon. Gentleman? In the light of the views expressed in the form of questions from both sides of the House this afternoon, will he report back to the Cabinet what has taken place in the House and invite the Cabinet to reconsider its decision and ask it to come forward with recommendations based on the Boyle stages, leaving it to hon. Members—if they take the view of the Leader of the House—to impose a more restrictive condition if they think fit?

Mr. St. John-Stevas: The Cabinet has thought very carefully about these matters and has given its view to the House. I, as Leader of the House, am most willing to receive representations—[HON. MEMBERS: "When?"] I have had representations. It is not always those who make the most noise who are the most representative. There may be others in this House who take a different view. I am open to all representations, so that we can reach a satisfactory solution to this problem in the interests of the House and the country that we represent.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I propose to call two more hon. Members from either side.

Mr. Nicholas Winterton: Is my right hon. Friend aware that his statement this afternoon is both deplorable and disgraceful to many Members on both sides of the House? Will he take seriously the request made, in a moderate and responsible fashion, by the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition and reconsider the proposals that have been put to the House this afternoon? Will he also give an assurance that there will be a free vote in this House on the subject, including Ministers, so that the House can come to a proper decision? Furthermore, will he say how hon. Members are to be able to contain and manage the bureaucracy if the people who comprise it are given much better facilities and far higher salaries than Members of this House?

Mr. St. John-Stevas: On the question of a free vote, I must point out that the proposals that have been put before the House are Government proposals. Since they are Government proposals, they will be supported by the Government. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] Yes, of course, they must be. It is no good hon. Gentlemen shouting. That is the most elementary rule in our constitution. There is a Government recommendation before the House, but hon. Members who are not members of the Government will be free to vote according to their interests. I cannot speak for members of the Opposition. I am saying, I hope as clearly and as openly as I can, what the situation is from the Government's point of view.
I have already expressed my appreciation of the attitude taken by the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition. I am sure that he will be delighted that that support has now been backed by my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton). However, I cannot agree that these proposals are deplorable and disgraceful.

Mr. Winterton: They are.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: That is my hon. Friend's view. I believe that they are a responsible attempt to put forward proposals that reconcile a number of conflicting interests. There is no proposal before the House on the question of linkage. It is a matter for the House to decide and not a matter for Government proposals.

Mr. Cohen: Does the right hon. Gentleman regard Ministers as Members of the House? He said that eventually the House will decide what is to happen on the matter. In reply to the question from his hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton) he stated clearly that Government Ministers will not be entitled to the privilege of a free vote. I should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman three questions and I like succinct and short answers to them.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: I hope that the hon. Gentleman's questions will be short.

Mr. Cohen: They will be short. First, will time be provided to debate the matter? Secondly, will the debate be

on the basis of either "Yes" or "No" to the Government's proposals or will there be the right to introduce amendments? Thirdly, in the light of what has happened here today, will the right of Ministers and all Members of the House to have a free vote be reconsidered? It is not a political matter, and there will be support across the Chamber. The Government will be well advised to take account of the strength of feeling in the House.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: I appreciate the hon. Gentleman's argument. However, it is a contradictory proposal for the Government, as the Government, to put proposals before the House and not to support them. If a Government Minister does not wish to support the recommendations and he wishes to exercise his right as a Back Bencher, he is free to do so. In reply to the question "Will the Government provide time for the matter to be debated?" the answer is "Yes". In reply to the question "Will it be possible for Members of the House to vote either 'Yes' or 'No' or to table amendments?", the answer is "Yes". I cannot be more succinct than that.

Sir Raymond Gower: Does my right hon. Friend recall that when the House last considered the matter the question of linkage was debated at considerable length and in great detail? The House reached a certain conclusion. Is it not remarkable that my right hon. Friend is speaking about linkage as if it were a novel idea upon which he would like to ascertain hon. Members' views? All hon. Members take a certain amount of stick on the issue—it is invidious—and there is a certain degree of opprobrium expressed. Does my right hon. Friend recognise that the formula commended by the Government, through him, is one that ensures maximum opprobrium, staggered over three years?

Mr. St. John-Stevas: I shall resist the temptation to resume the three year-two year argument. I wish that there was an independent review body to which the matter could be referred. I am not saying that the idea of linking is novel; I am saying something quite different—that it is a complex idea. Before we decide on the form that linking should take, there must be an opportunity for


reflection and discussion about the difficulties involved and which form of linkage is the most appropriate. The Government have not taken a view on the matter.

Mr. Mike Thomas: The House has taken a view.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: This House of Commons has not taken a view on the matter—a previous House of Commons has. That is one of the indications that must be taken into account, but it cannot be the resolution of the question. What the Government are saying is that if the House wants linkage it must put forward a motion and we shall see what the support in the House is for the matter. When that has been assessed, appropriate action will be taken with that result in mind. The Government have responsibility to propose, but the House, in the last resort, disposes of the issue.

Mr. Straw: Is the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster aware that, with respect, he was in error in suggesting to the House that the Government have treated the Review Body's proposals on Members' pay consistently with the manner in which the Government have treated other Review Body proposals on pay? Is he aware that in respect of doctors and dentists—the nearest analogue to Members of Parliament—the Government accepted in full the recommendations of the Review Body, including those on staging and updating? In the light of that, does he believe that, far from treating hon. Members more favourably than members of the public, the Government are treating them less favourably? Finally, would the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster kindly subtract 78 from 81 and tell the House what the answer is?

Mr. St. John-Stevas: I am willing to do that and I think that I could if I tried. However, we are not in the year 1978; we are in the year 1979. I hope that we do not need an independent review body to resolve that question. The doctor and dentist review stretches over a two-year period from 1978 to 1980.

Mr. Peter Bottomley: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Have there been any changes in the procedure of the House since 1975? At that time, the House did the best that it could to link Members' pay. When it was not possible to make that binding on the Government, it was because of the procedures of the House. Have those procedures changed, or will there remain the same difficulty if the course outlined by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is followed?

Mr. English: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. Are you able to confirm whether a Cabinet Minister's statement is equivalent to that of a Treasury Minister? If so, by his repeated statements today, the Leader of the House has committed the Government to introduce a money resolution such that hon. Members could, if they wished, vote for the Boyle recommendation and not merely for the Cabinet's recommendation.

Mr. Ogden: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Will the Leader of the House be allowed to make further comment, not only about salaries and linkages but about the possible effect of wage freezes on those over the next few years?

Mr. Speaker: I am afraid that I am unable to help hon. Members with the questions that they have raised.

Orders of the Day — SUPPLY

[1st ALLOTTED DAY]—considered.

Orders of the Day — MANPOWER SERVICES COMMISSION

Mr. Speaker: Before I call the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Varley) I should remind the House that the debate will conclude at seven o'clock. Therefore, brief speeches are the order of the day. I should like new hon. Members to know that, when I keep the register of the length of hon. Members' speeches, I do not count speeches that are eight minutes or under in length.

4.38 p.m.

Mr. Eric G. Varley: I beg to move,
That this House is opposed to the decision of the Government to reduce the budget of the Manpower Services Commission which will injure the prospects of jobs for the long-term unemployed, and will adversely affect the opportunities of employment for young people at a time when the Government's stated economic policy will substantially increase unemployment.
For my part, Mr. Speaker, I shall observe your request for short speeches I know that several of my hon. Friends wish to take part in the truncated debate. The cuts on which we are seeking to censure the Government today were announced in the Budget. Therefore, it is against the background of the Budget that the cuts should be examined. The Budget will put many more workers out of a job. How many workers we do not know because the Government are coy about revealing the forecasts which they undoubtedly possess.
We know that the increase in the minimum lending rate and the cuts in local government expenditure will put more people on the dole. The Prime Minister made clear on Tuesday that her incomes policy—and she has an incomes policy—will also put more people on the dole. There will be bankruptcies—some say bankruptcies galore—in the private sector and jobs in the public sector will be squeezed, as Government Ministers have said, by the tightening of cash limits.
The relaxation of the restriction on the export of capital will export many jobs

that survive the Government's anti-employment measures. It is no wonder that the Secretary of State for Employment was compelled to admit to the House on Tuesday that unemployment, which was steadily falling month by month under the previous Government, is bound to go up.
It is against that background that we have to examine the mean-minded and damaging cuts in the Labour Government's employment schemes. Whenever we watch a war film on television we know that there will always be one good German in it. It is the same with the Secretary of State for Employment. He made his reputation by being the nice guy among the Tory "bower boys" and "bovver girls".
The right hon. Gentleman was able to get away with that in Opposition because he did not have the responsibility. We used to have soothing words from him, but now we have to judge him by his actions and we believe that his actions so far are damaging. Some would say that they are worse than those that will be imposed by the Secretary of State for Industry in his line of country.
Either the Secretary of State for Employment fought in Cabinet and lost or he did not bother to fight. Even worse, he probably offered these miserable cuts because he actually believes in them. After all, we are informed by the press that the Prime Minister told her Cabinet colleagues that their virility will be judged by the spending cuts that they offer voluntarily.
Unless the explanation for the cuts is convincing, the Secretary of State is about to lose his halo and take his place in the Tory rogues' gallery. I am looking forward to his explanation. Whatever else the right hon. Gentleman was thought to be, we were always given to understand that he was a great consulter. Did he consult the TUC or even the CBI before making the cuts? I do not think that he did.
Even more serious from our point of view is the question whether the right hon. Gentleman consulted the Manpower Services Commission itself. The budget and programmes of the MSC are lacerated by the cuts. I suspect that he did not consult the Commission, but if he cares to tell me now that he did—and by "consult" I mean real consultation in


advance and not calling in representatives of the MSC just before the Budget—I shall be glad to give way. The right hon. Gentleman is not seeking to intervene. Clearly he did not consult the MSC. No doubt he said that these were budgetary matters and he probably called in the MSC representatives a few hours before the Budget to inform them that the cuts were to be imposed.
It may be that some Conservative Members regard the MSC as what has come to be described in Tory vocabulary as a quango, but the Secretary of State knows that it is not a quango. It is a fully representative body and was set up by the previous Tory Government who extracted it from the Department of Employment machinery and turned it into the organisation that it is today. Did the Secretary of State give his own party's creation the brush-off? I suspect that he did. I suspect that he did not consult the Commission.
It is suggested that the right hon. Gentleman had his first meeting with the full Commission yesterday. Will he tell us what came out of that meeting? More important, what did the right hon. Gentleman tell the Commission? Was he told that the Commission found the cuts acceptable or that they would damage the MSC programmes? Did the Commission tell the right hon. Gentleman that it could absorb the cuts painlessly or that they could be implemented only by undermining some of its programmes?
The Minister of State, Civil Service Department told the House yesterday that the Government are anxious to provide us with the maximum possible amount of information. The Secretary of State will therefore presumably welcome the opportunity of answering my questions. They are quite simple questions and I suspect that they were put to him at his meeting with the MSC yesterday.
Was he told at that meeting that the cuts would so damage the MSC programmes that it would not be possible to continue some of them? I shall be grateful if the right hon. Gentleman will also clarify the press notice issued by his Department on Budget day. Perhaps we may also have the clarification of definitions in the departmental dictionary, because the press notice said:
All of the existing special employment measures will continue … some of them will

in future be concentrated on the areas where unemployment is highest and the need for special assistance greatest.
What does the word "concentrated" mean in that context? Does it mean that, although some of the measures will be removed from what the Secretary of State believes to be less deserving areas, the amount of finance will be increased in what he regards as the more deserving areas? If so, will he tell us how much and where?
The right hon. Gentleman would do better to confess that the use of the word "concentrated" in that press notice is misleading to the point of being fraudulent. Will he admit that support under the schemes will not be "concentrated" in certain areas, but will be confined to certain areas? The use of the word "concentrated" covers up the fact that the cut in the special temporary employment programme of £42 million is a 50 per cent. cut and will deny employment over the next nine months to more than 20,000 long-term unemployed people.
It is easy to go through the list of schemes to catologue the iniquities perpetrated upon them. I do not want to take too much time, so I shall just go through the list briefly. The community industry scheme will be seriously affected. The Department's press release refers distortedly to an expansion of the programme. In fact, the planned expansion by the Labour Government is being cut back by 1,000 places out of 7,000 places.
The Government are cutting back on the small firms employment subsidy. The Department has the nerve to claim in its press notice, as Treasury Ministers have claimed, that the Government have the interests of small firms at heart, but there is to be a cut in the small firms employment subsidy.
When the Secretary of State was in Opposition, he made a practice of issuing statements lamenting the impact of unemployment on school leavers. Yet now he proposes a deplorable cut in the youth opportunities programme. My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Golding), who is to wind up for the Opposition, will have more to say about that.
All the cuts are damaging, and no doubt my hon. Friends who take part in the debate will outline the impact on


their constituencies. In addition to the STEP programme reductions, there are two cuts that I find particularly distressing. They are the cuts in the temporary short-time working compensation scheme and the MSC training programmes.
The short-time working compensation scheme was the previous Government's machinery to replace the temporary employment subsidy which was highly valued by hon. Members on both sides of the House. Reducing the period for which the short-time working scheme is available from a year to six months may cripple it beyond repair. Our intention in this financial year was to use the scheme to save 55,000 jobs in vulnerable areas and industries where there was likely to be high unemployment. Slashing that safety net in half will render it useless. Even worse, I understand that there is a question mark over the scheme as a whole. The right hon. Gentleman usually gives straight answers and we want them today.
What is to be the future of the scheme, truncated as it is? Will the right hon. Gentleman put it on a statutory basis, as we hoped to do, or will he make sure that it is buried or got rid of secretly? I hope that that will not prove to be the case and that the right hon. Gentleman will have second thoughts about it.
But, of course, the Secretary of State may say that this scheme—perhaps all the schemes, for all I know—simply perpetuate what the Prime Minister is pleased to call phoney jobs. We utterly reject that view. We believe that at least the Government are under an obligation to tell us how they intend to create what they describe as real jobs. Even if all the mythical entrepreneurs are galvanised by the Budget into creating dynamic technologically advanced industries, those industries will have to be manned, and they cannot be manned if men and women are not available with the necessary skills. So the £32 million cut in the MSC's training programme is an act of wanton folly even according to the Government's own criteria.
Although questions have been put to the Government, even the Treasury is as yet unable to quantify how great the tax handouts in the Budget will be for those with the highest incomes. The right hon. Gentleman is entitled to correct me if I

am wrong, but I reckon that the total will be near £1 billion in a full year. The estimate depends on where one starts, of course, but the sum is certainly over £500 million. Let us compare that huge sum with the miserable cut of £170 million which we regard as petty and spiteful.
The right hon. Gentleman is in charge of planting the seed corn. Instead, by accepting the savage cuts in these various schemes, he is scattering the seed corn to the winds. It will not even mean a saving of Government expenditure, because these petty economies will inevitably lead to far greater sums being paid out to those who will go on the dole.
At Question Time on Tuesday, Tory Member after Tory Member bobbed up and asked for special favours for his constituency. The Secretary of State and his colleagues foisted a new bit of Tory jargon upon us. It seems that vulnerable areas and groups have to be "resilient". That is the new vogue word.
So, in this package of cuts, those who could have been given temporary employment will have to be resilient; unemployed young people, 16 to 18, will have to be resilient; disadvantaged young people will have to be resilient; workers whose factories face temporary restructuring will have to be resilient; workers for small firms in industry and commerce will have to be resilient; those who would have benefited from training which will now be denied them will have to be resilient.
That is a lot of resilience. The Secretary of State will not reveal his own forecast to the House, but he freely admits that unemployment is going to go up; indeed, there is no doubt that over the next 12 months unemployment will rise. The right hon. Gentleman should live up to the standards he sought to proclaim in Opposition. He should take back this miserable ragbag of cuts. If he does not, we shall divide the House at seven o'clock.

4.54 p.m.

The Secretary of State for Employment (Mr. James Prior): The right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Varley) has been in characteristic form, and I hope that we shall have longer to debate these vital and important matters of employment policy as the years go by. I admire his courage in moving the motion. After


all, the record of the Labour Government over unemployment suggests that it would have been better for the Opposition to take a period of enforced silence before talking to us about unemployment.
The right hon. Gentleman said that the Government were coy about revealing their forecasts. It may help him if I read what the right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) said as Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1976:
The fact is that no one can predict with any hope of accuracy the path of unemployment over the next few years. As the hon. Member for Oswestry said the other day:
'It simply does not lie within the capability of Government to give employment targets.'"—[Official Report, 21 December 1976; Vol. 923, c. 499.]
It is quite obvious that the right hon. Member for Leeds, East fully agreed at that time that it was impossible to give accurate forecasts.
I have said that I believe that unemployment is likely to go up over the next vear or so, and perhaps the right hon. Member for Chesterfield would like to consult the right hon. Member for Leeds, East and ask him what were the Treasury forecasts which were given to him before the general election. If he asks that question, he may get an answer that he will understand, but it will be one that he will not readily wish to accept.
I believe that the present state of Britain and the state of world trade will make unemployment very dfficult to keep down over the next few years, and I want to address my remarks to what I believe is the difference in philosophy and economic policy between the two sides of the House. I say at once that, although there is strong disagreement about the means of curing unemployment or of keeping it at a reasonable level, I do not believe that anything separates us about ends.
The scourge of unemployment, particularly where it is synonymous with poverty, crime and bad conditions, is totally unacceptable to all Members and to the nation as a whole. I put it in those terms because, as I have said, we may by 10, 15 or 20 years' time have adopted a different attitude to unemployment from the one we have today. But for the moment at any rate it is a scourge and one that we have to deal with as being totally unacceptable.
The Conservative Party's record on unemployment compares more than favourably with that of the Labour Party. In the five years of Labour rule from 1974 to 1979, the numbers of unemployed more than doubled to 1·3 million, and youth unemployment, of which the right hon. Gentleman made so much, went up in 1978 compared with 1973 by six times.

Mrs. Elaine Kellett Bowman: Is my right hon. Friend aware that during the period of Labour rule the figures trebled in my consituency?

Mr. Prior: I think that they trebled in a large number of cases. Since the war, every Labour Government have left more people out of work than were unemployed when they came to office. That is an inescapable fact of political life. It would therefore come better from the Opposition if they approached this debate—which they initiated—with some humility, and perhaps questioned their own policies and tried to understand why they simply did not work.
Listening to the right hon. Gentleman and reading the motion, the impression is that we should continue with the same policies, subsidising more here and more somewhere else, and paying for those policies by high taxation and a balance between the private and public sector which has discouraged manufacturing investment and production. I could put the issue in these words:
Our public expenditure has grown faster than our rate of economic growth could sustain. I also believe that this has been an important reason for our generally poor industrial performance, for it has meant that the public sector—that is both central and local government—has pre-empted financial and manpower resources at the expense of manufacturing industries. That position has to be reversed. It will be both painful and difficult.
That is what the former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the right hon. Member for Heywood and Royton (Mr. Barnett), was saying in November 1976. It was true then and it is true today. One can look at the figures alone. In December 1973, there were 7,799,000 people employed in manufacturing industry. In December 1978, the figure was 7,167,000—a decline of 632,000 people. During that period, manufacturing output declined by 4 per cent.: we were actually producing 4 per cent. less goods from our factories in 1978 than we produced in 1973. In 1978, perhaps the only year


in the last five years when living standards in Britain increased and there was more real spending power in the economy, the import of manufactured goods increased by 13½ per cent.
What we have to face as a country, let alone as a House of Commons, is that we are busy importing other people's unemployment. We are importing it in the car industry and in all the consumer durable industries. We are importing it in a whole range of manufactured goods. Those are goods that we should be making for ourselves but which we are not making. Instead, we are importing them. It is a sorry picture for our country.
In a debate in the last Parliament, I quoted the figure for cars. In 1960, we in Britain built 1,345,000 cars. In that same year, the French built just over 1 million cars. By 1977, we were building 1,300,000 cars, rather fewer than we had built in 1960, while French car production had gone up to over 3 million. That is one of the reasons why our unemployment has risen. It is one of the reasons why our prosperity, relative to other countries, has declined. It is one of the reasons why we have become a country with high unemployment. As our unemployment has risen, we have looked for other means of trying to keep numbers of people off the register and in some sort of work.
As well as those problems, we face world economic factors which will make our task even harder. Given the experience of the last few years, we are not likely to get out of our difficulties by pursuing the same policies that have been pursued for the past five years. If the Opposition consider that these support policies were the answer to our unemployment problems and all that was necessary was to continue expanding them, I would only say that the number of people being helped by the policies and the schemes that the right hon. Gentleman mentioned are running at about 70,000 less than a year ago. Despite my belief that these schemes are only part of the answer, which is why we have cut the budget by £172 million, they will still be assisting next spring 50,000 more people than they were assisting this spring.
Even with this cut of £172 million, for which I make no apology, because it is essential to try a new approach, we have kept the schemes in operation, although restricted more to the special development areas and the development areas so that we achieve a real difference between areas of high unemployment and other areas.
We are talking mostly about cuts in forecasts—I shall return to this later in my speech—rather than cuts in the programme as a whole. If the right hon. Member for Chesterfield believes that I have to sustain my virility within the Government and the Cabinet by accepting bigger cuts than might otherwise have been pushed upon me, he has not followed carefully my progress, or lack of progress, in the House in the last 10 years.
We are fulfilling our clear election commitment to reduce public expenditure but to concentrate aid. My definition of "concentrate" is that we are keeping the same degree of aid almost untouched in the special development areas and in the development areas and cutting aid from certain other parts, which will enable greater aid to be given to areas of high unemployment. That is what we said we would do. We said that we would concentrate aid on the areas and the groups of people where the need was greatest.
There has been a period of very rapid expansion, and there is a need for consolidation. In five years, the expenditure at outturn prices of the Manpower Services Commission has gone up from £120 million to £514 million. As with all rapidly growing organisations, the time has come, in any case, for some tightening up of the schemes and perhaps an improvement in administration, to make those who run them and those who take part recognise their costs and their value.
Scare stories were put about at the general election that we would destroy all these schemes. We had to fight hard to stop people believing that we intended to destroy the schemes, including the Manpower Services Commission, overnight. The idea put out during the campaign that we would destroy the Manpower Services Commission came ill


from a party that knew that we had set up the Commission.
We were told that our aim was to destroy the scheme and to create deserts of unemployment in the North-West and other areas. The former Prime Minister went to Glasgow and announced that we were determined to produce deserts of unemployment in Glasgow and other parts of the country. I do not know what he had been doing over the previous years when his Government were creating unemployment. All the scare stories put out by the Labour Party that we would cut back these schemes seem to have had precisely the opposite effect in the minds of the electorate to what the Labour Party hoped.

Mr. Varley: I have no recollection of my party officially putting out scare stories that the Manpower Services Commission would be wrecked or abolished. Will the right hon. Gentleman say whether he has seen the Manpower Services Commission and whether it accepts the cuts that he has announced?

Mr. Prior: There were plenty of stories going around that we would abolish the Manpower Services Commission. Everyone on this side of the House heard them time and again.
It is true that I did not consult the whole of the MSC before the cuts were made, although I asked the chairman to carry out what consultations he could at short notice. I was told, quite properly, that what we were asking for was something that the chairman had to take on his own shoulders as there was not sufficient time to consult all the commissioners in full. I have asked him, and I asked the MSC yesterday when I met all the commissioners, to look in full now at our proposals for the years 1979–80 and 1980–81.
I did not make specific proposals either to the chairman or to the Commission, a month ago or yesterday. I have asked the Commission what it thinks it would be best to cut, given the need to make these schemes as effective as possible and to conform to the Government's public expenditure programme. Therefore, I have tried, so far as is humanly possible, to consult it in advance on a decision which needed to be taken quickly and which involved a certain budgetary content.
I am not saying that the MSC would have wanted any cuts, but I think that its members will agree that, bearing in mind the facts that cuts were required, they had a reasonable opportunity to decide among themselves where the cuts should fall, and they will have an even greater opportunity of coming to decisions for future years.
The electorate had the clearest choice that they have had for many years. They knew precisely what we were going to do about the expansion of these programmes. Having had that carefully explained to them, they voted in large numbers for the policy that we are now adopting.
In this matter one should not consider just the schemes of cash aid. The policy of the previous Government and their legislation over the previous five years have had a debilitating effect—the Employment Protection Act, the Dock Work Regulation Act, the failure to support small businesses and the effect of the Employment Protection Act on small business confidence—as Mr. Harold Lever used to say, somewhat disloyally, when he was sitting on this Bench. The previous Government had a dogged persistence in the belief that everything they did was right, when even their own supporters were telling them that they were wrong.
We are entitled to ask what they would have done. Are they saying, as the right hon. Member for Chesterfield seemed to imply today, that they would have kept entirely to their public expenditure plans for the coming year? If so, what they are really saying is that they would have to find an extra £2 billion from direct taxation, from an increase in VAT or perhaps from a tax of which they were very fond—the employers' insurance surcharge.
They raised that surcharge twice before. The jobs lost as a result totalled far more than the jobs that they saved by paying out under their job creation schemes the money they had taken from employers.

Mrs. Kellett-Bowman: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the previous Government put their poll tax on employment at precisely the time when the other countries of Europe were reducing


the tax on employment for firms in difficulties, such as the textile industry, thus putting us at a further disadvantage?

Mr. Prior: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That has added to our unit costs of production. The result of that and of keeping our VAT rates low is another reason why we have been sucking in so many imports. Not only have one or two other countries in Europe stopped piling extra costs on employers by way of social insurance, and so on, but Sweden, for example, has started to reduce those costs a little—though, granted, from a higher level than ours.
This is the question that Labour Members must answer: from where were they going to get the money to provide the extra schemes that they accuse us of cutting? Would they have done it through the employers' insurance surcharge, by VAT increases, by further cuts in public expenditure or even by increased direct taxation? All that has been tried before and it has failed. The failure is plain for everyone to see.
It is not just the unemployment that we have now which is important, but the trade figures, the import of manufactured goods, the uncompetitiveness of so much of the British economy and the holding back over the past few months before the election of a number of decisions on steel and shipbuilding, which the right hon. Gentleman knows had to be made and should have been made earlier.
All those are part and parcel of the previous Government's policies which failed. It is no answer for the Opposition to put down a motion on unemployment and this Government's policy on cuts when their policies of the past five years have so abjectly failed. Memories in politics are short—perhaps that is a good thing—but I hope that the Opposition will allow a decent period to elapse before they again show the hypocrisy that they have shown by putting down this motion. I ask the House to reject it.

5.17 p.m.

Dr. David Clark: I am pleased to be back in the House after an enforced gap of five years. I should like to pay a brief tribute, with which I am sure hon. Members will want to be associated, to my predecessor, Arthur Blenkinsop. He was in the House for

almost 30 years. We knew him as an assiduous and conscientious constituency Member. But, more than that, he had a national reputation in matters of recreation, the arts, amenities and the Health Service. That reputation not only was well-founded but commanded much respect.
I have inherited from Arthur Blenkinsop a constituency with many problems—problems which will be made much worse by the Government's policy of cutting the budget of the Manpower Services Commission. I know that the Minister has been to the North-East and seen some of the problems at first hand, but I want to explain how my constituency's problems will be compounded by the Government's measures.
A DHSS report in 1976 described my constituency as one of the 10 most deprived constituencies in the country. The Northern region strategical team reported in 1977 that South Tyneside was the most deprived district in a region not noted for affluence. Underpinning all this poverty and difficulty is the tremendous problem of unemployment. As the Minister said, unemployment was an issue in the election campaign. In fact it was the issue in my constituency, where 2,000 more people voted Labour than in 1974. That shows that they had more confidence in the previous Administration in this respect than in the present one.
I might be wrong about that, but I remind the House that I am talking about unemployment, on the latest figures, of 12·8 per cent.—two and a half times the national figure, and almost twice the figure for the Northern region. Male unemployment is 15·7 per cent.; almost one man in six in my constituency does not have a job. I note, too, the Government's policies and reflect that the two big employers in my constituency are shipbuilding and local government—both subject to restrictions, or impending restrictions, by the Government. The decision announced yesterday that the Shell-Esso vessel is to be built in Finland does not augur well for the shipbuilding areas.
I hate to prophesy, but I fear the events of the next 12 months. I pray that I may be wrong. I cannot see male unemployment being less than 20 per cent. in the South Tyneside area. Hon. Members will understand my concern. I do not


accuse the Secretary of State of callousness. I believe that he is genuinely shocked by what he has seen in some of the regions. I do not say this carpingly, but I believe that some of his hon. Friends would do well to see the problems that exist in some of the deprived parts of the country. I did not appreciate them until I went there. Those problems are reflected in the savage and tragic unemployment among young people.
During the election campaign I was, in a sense, heartened to meet many youngsters who were employed under the youth opportunities programme, often in social services, sometimes in industry. I went out of my way to talk to the young people. They all said that they would much prefer to do a job than to be on the dole. The success of this programme was such that in South Shields I met only two people at the time of the election who had been on a youth opportunities scheme and had not been fixed up with a job. That shows the value of such a scheme. However, we still have 750 young people unemployed in South Shields.
I have listened with care to what the Minister said, and I welcome the fact that cutbacks are not to be made in areas such as South Shields. I note that in the press release issued by the Department it was said that there will be some shift to wards cheaper schemes and some curtailment of the duration of programmes. This will reduce the quality of the various schemes. We feel that in areas such as mine this will have an effect on the services offered by the Manpower Services Commission. We deeply deplore and fear such cuts.
We also fear the effect of the Buudget. I give notice to the Government that I intend to be a thorn in their side on this issue and intend to prick their consciences. We are talking about one in five of the males being out of work in areas such as mine. It was 50 years ago when the hon. Member who at that time represented the constituency next to mine—Jarrow—led a march to London. I hope that I shall not have to take such measures. We are not asking for the earth. We are not greedy people. All that we want is to have a share in the affluence that we see in certain parts of the country. What we seek can be best summed up in the words of a pitman-poet from South Shields, a man who later was

to grace these Benches for 20 years, Joe Batey. He wrote in a poem at the turn of the century:
We do not ask the earth; only that portion of its plenty that is ours.
That is what we want in areas such as South Shields.

5.25 p.m.

Mr. John Butcher: I compliment the hon. Member for South Shields (Dr. Clark) on his return to the House and on his speech on an issue about which he feels strongly. I share his concern. I hope that we shall be discussing similar issues across the Floor of the House on many occasions in the coming years. Unemployment is inevitably an emotive issue, and hon. Members differ strongly on the methods by which it may be reduced or its effects ameliorated.
I have been fortunate enough to catch your eye this afternoon, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and I am sure that if the previous hon. Member for Coventry, South-West were present she would be anxiously trying to catch your eye, too. She cared deeply for the plight of the unemployed. I refer to my predecessor, Mrs. Audrey Wise. Her views on society were totally different from mine. Some of her methods were different from those which I shall pursue. However, in this House an hon. Member is always respected for having the courage of his or her convictions. She worked hard for all those constituents who needed help, and she was assiduous in her attendance here and in her duties in this place. During the election campaign Mrs. Wise and I shared a platform on three occasions. She debated the issues, including unemployment, without rancour.
Coventry, South-West is not a constituency which can be described as average or typical in any sense. It contains an above average proportion of skilled industrial workers. It has above average owner-occupation and an above average percentage of trade union members. Most of the university of Warwick is within its boundaries. It is good for the political soul of a new hon. Member to have a large group of young idealists on his doorstep.
On the university campus there are many fringe groups which I can only describe under the collective umbrella of


the "Enid Blyton Left." In the mainstream there are the Federation of Conservative Students and the Young Socialists—the Labour club. I am bound to report that the Labour club has a football team called Workers United. I am further bound to report that Workers United beat FCS 6-0 last year and 4-0 this year. This represents a swing of 17 per cent. to the Conservatives.
The recent history of the city of Coventry is also different from that of most of our cities. When the city centre was destroyed overnight by bombing, Coventrians started afresh. They built a new and beautiful shopping centre and so rejuvenated the local economy that it was nicknamed "The Klondyke" in the 1950s. Today 186,000 people are employed in the area, together producing export goods to the value of £250 million per annum. That is £1,344 of exports per head of the working population. If that figure had been repeated nationally we would be debating here the happy issues associated with economic success rather than, as is, sadly, frequently the case, our recurring economic crises.
There are clouds on the horizon. Coventry's strengths are also her weaknesses. I refer to the unusually high proportion of the work force which is directly employed in manufacturing. There is an over-dependence on a small number of large employers, and there are the possible effects of the silicon chip revolution on a city which, more than any other in this country, is dependent on the repetitive assembly of engineering and automotive products.
That brings me to the terms of today's debate, the role of the Manpower Services Commission and other public agencies in dealing with the now rapidly accelerating changes in the pattern of employment. There is now a national acceptance that public expenditure deliberately boosted to increase employment suffers from its own law of diminishing returns. The revenue-raising implications of a job artificially created may cause a job to be lost in a hitherto profitable company. Ameliorative measures are precisely that. They do not solve long-term problems or provide long-term jobs.
The Manpower Services Commission has an important role to play in keeping unemployed youngsters "job-fit", as we call it, and in keeping its training and placement programmes responsive to the needs of local employers. Value for money also is essential, and I am delighted to report to the House that this is precisely what is being provided by the MSC in Coventry.
Compared with last year, we shall lose 100 places on the STEP schemes, which is unfortunate, but the youth opportunities programme will be expanded. There were 3,000 starts on YOP projects last year. There will be 4,500 starts this year. It must be remembered also that last year's budget for the MSC was based on a higher level of occupancy than has so far been achieved.
On behalf of the young people of Coventry I thank my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment for recognising their problems in the most tangible way possible, and I am sure that they will respond with enthusiasm and dedication.
There are 11,916 unemployed people on Coventry's register, yet there are still great shortages of labour, particularly of skilled workers. The engineering employers require technicians of all kinds, and there are vacancies for draughtsmen, designers, work study engineers and process planners. Measures have therefore been taken to increase co-operation between the local education authority and the Coventry engineering employers' association on the means by which education can become more sensitive to the needs of local industry. In responding to the changing patterns of employment, further education departments of local authorities will have an increasing role to play, and it may be that within education budgets a shift of resources into further and adult education will become inevitable. As training and retraining become more important, a blurring of the lines of responsibility between Departments of Government at both national and local level may take place.
I am not arguing today for a reallocation of resources between Departments, but I hope that the recently announced changes in the MSC budget mark the beginning of a rationalisation and a fresh


national approach which will take advantage of existing skills within the Department of Employment and the Department of Education and Science, to the benefit of all those seeking work.
It used to be said on Birmingham city council that there were three main political parties—the Labour Party, the Conservative Party, and members of the education committee. For six years I was a member of that council and took a special interest in further education. For nine years I have worked in the computer industry, and I hope that the House will therefore understand why I cannot let today's debate pass without a brief mention of the effects that the silicon chip will have on future employment patterns and life styles.
In Coventry and the West Midlands microprocessors are of special interest because the very nature of our industries will dictate their utilisation if we are to remain competitive, but this will not take place without our taking cognisance of our new social responsibilities.
Every 16-year-old leaving school this summer will probably need complete retraining on three or four occasions in his working life on his way to retirement at the age of 50. Changes in policy on redundancy payments may be necessary to encourage the investment of those payments in new ventures. If spectacular increases in efficiency are achieved, we may have to rewrite the economic textbooks, particularly those sections dealing with surplus wealth. If there is to be surplus wealth sloshing around the economy, it could be used to assist future Governments in promoting cheap money policies for borrowers. We may be able to look forward to the day when there is one highly paid wage earner per family, a day when we may remember the latchkey children as an anti-social phenomenon of the 1960s and 1970s.
If a man or woman is working a four-day week, leisure pursuits will take on a larger significance in our lives. With more leisure and more time to make buying decisions, society could become more acquisitive—not just in the sense of acquiring consumer goods but in the sense of acquiring compassion. A family with more time together and more money can also afford to care for the aged, the disabled and the disadvantaged. I hope that we shall see an acceleration

of the trend to family-based care, reinforced by Government policies, and a continued change in the direction of resource allocation away from institutionalised care towards home-based provision.
I am aware that for centuries Members of Parliament have seized on a single technical breakthrough to project and predict earth-shattering economic changes. In many instances it just has not happened. That may be the case with the silicon chip, but I doubt it. The revolution is already under way, and its effects will be as profound as those of the coming of the railway age in the last century. There is a danger that its advent will polarise economic opinions. For example, surplus wealth may be the catalyst which permits large numbers of people to become self-employed, or, alternatively, it may be used to generate an increase in the number of workers' co-operatives.
The driving force for wealth creation must continue to be capitalism. The economic atmosphere must be one of enterprise and value for money from State agencies. In this way, and through a mixed economy, the quality of life can be truly enhanced for all sections of the community.
I have a rough idea that this is the sixty-third maiden speech to which the House has listened in the past few weeks. I thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for your indulgence, and I thank the House for its customary courtesy on this occasion.

5.38 p.m.

Mr. David Alton: I congratulate the hon. Member for Coventry, South-West (Mr. Butcher) on his maiden speech. He remarked that there were three parties on the Birmingham city council. I am glad to assure him that there are three parties in this place, and in congratulating the hon. Gentleman and making my contribution to the debate I am happy to speak from the Liberal Bench. The hon. Gentleman's speech, I thought, proved that even in the computer industry there is feeling and heart, for his words demonstrated concern for the genuine plight of the unemployed and his anxiety to remedy the problems of his constituents. I am sure that the House will hear many more speeches from the hon. Gentleman, and, if they are of the quality


of the one which he has just delivered, it will not tire of hearing from him.
I wish now to refer to the situation on Merseyside in discussing both the subject raised today by the Opposition and the state of affairs created by the Budget. Hon. Members may well have seen the report in The Observer last weekend which said:
Treasury forecasts that unemployment will rise to 2 million and that inflation could reach 20 per cent. next year have been suppressed because of their acute political sensitivity.
Sensitivity is required when we talk about unemployment, and any Budget which allows the growth of unemployment is for that reason unacceptable. It is probably more important to talk about the massive scale of unemployment in terms of the Budget presented last week than in terms of the continuation of the Manpower Services Commission, important though that body may have been.
It is not a matter of people saying that they will not work. They cannot get work. They cannot work. I deplore the attempts made from time to time to suggest that people, particularly on Merseyside, are workshy. That has never been my experience, and the 100,000 people out of work on Merseyside, some 11 per cent. of the population, will deny that that is so.
In parts of my constituency of Edge Hill, there are about 30 per cent. of people out of work—an amazing figure when set alongside the national average of 5·2 per cent., about 1,238,000 in all. It demonstrates the difference between North and South and the difference between the hardbitten industrial centres and the more well-endowed areas of the South-East.
I am worried by the growing number who are unemployed for long periods. Over 955,000 have been unemployed for periods longer than four weeks. Many of those remain unemployed for periods far longer than that. They have more and more difficulty in obtaining employment as the years go by.
Against the background of such largescale and long-term unemployment, we must consider with a certain amount of scepticism the schemes provided through the Manpower Services Commission. At the end of April it was estimated that 63,000 had been assisted by temporary

employment subsidy schemes. There were 11,200 assisted by the short-time working compensation scheme, 370 by the temporary short-term working compensation scheme, 27,600 by the small firms employment subsidy, 22,900 by the job release scheme, 870 by the adult employment subsidy scheme, 190 by the job introduction scheme, 70,000 by the youth employment scheme, 5,200 by the community industry scheme and 14,500 by the special temporary employment programme, 26,000 by the training places supported in industry scheme, a total of 242,000. That is only a drop in the ocean when taken in the context of 1,238,000 unemployed.
We all deplore the cuts made in the Budget introduced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer last week. I will give three examples. The youth opportunities programme has been cut by £52 million from £200 million. The STEP programme has been reduced to £42 million from £80 million and the TOPS programme by £22 million from £200 million. That is something with which we are all concerned. Even though the schemes have sometimes been merely palliatives, and even though we have been putting only poultices on the problems, nevertheless the schemes have made some contribution to the problems of the unemployed.
We should embark on ways of resuscitating the economy. Instead of creating quangos like the MSC as we did in 1973, expanding bureaucracy, coming close to setting up alternative education systems and getting into competition with already bureaucracy-filled local govenment, it would be far better to return the functions of the MSC to local government and let it get on with the job. The Association of Metropolitan Authorities proposed that action a few days ago. We would do well to listen to it.
We must consider carefully the effects of the Budget in terms of real employment within local government. I do not mean temporary employment schemes where people are given a short-term stay of execution. Many unemployed are taken off the dole queue only to be placed back on that scrap heap within a very short period. With certain schemes once a person has been employed for one year he is thrown back on the scrap heap without the opportunity of remaining in employment via that scheme.
That is not true of local government where many jobs are under threat because of the cuts announced by the Government in rate support grant, and because the previous Government failed to operate a proper prices and incomes policy. The result has been that local authorities are nowhere near the 5 per cent. targets laid down by the previous Secretary of State for the Environment.
In Liverpool, for example, there is a £5·4 million deficit to meet within the current financial year. That has been totally occasioned by wage increases and a failure by the previous Government to comply with their own pay guidelines.
Local government is expected by the present Government to remedy that. This Government have told local government to prune its expenditure. In Liverpool alone the effect of that policy this year will be to make necessary 1,841 redundancies within the local government structure, and next year a further 743 redundancies.
That is totally unacceptable. What choice will local government have if the rate support grant is not reviewed to take into account the terrific wage settlements that have been reached? The manual workers' award from 30 October this year—building workers, for instance—is an increase of 14·8 per cent. instead of the suggested 5 per cent. Social workers have received a 22 per cent. award. From 1 April teachers averaged a rise of 10·7 per cent. Comparability awards for manual workers have resulted in increases of about 5 per cent. and there will be further increases later in the year.
The effect of that is that the Liverpool city council has to find an additional £13 million. There are grant-aided subsidies that will reduce this amount, and by savings that can be made within the authority the total amount of the deficit will be about £5½ million.
The real effect on the employment of local government workers will be disastrous. It will mean that many more will end up in the unemployment queues.
No one can suggest that a superficial debate on the MSC reaches the crux of the problem of unemployment.
All hon. Members accept that unemployment is a problem that affects not only Merseyside and the country as a whole. It is a crisis that the whole of

the Western world will have to face. The hon. Member for Coventry, South-West was right to refer to the problems posed by new technology, the advent of the micro-chip. There will be major problems.
More thought must be given to work-sharing schemes and a fairer system in our industries that will result in the creation of more jobs. Until we give proper incentives through profit-sharing schemes, we shall not see the creation of more jobs within industry. Why should employees bother to work harder if that merely means putting more money in the employer's pocket? That is especially true if the employer is the person who will gain most from the tax reductions introduced in the Budget. If proper incentives had been provided for workers at the lower end of the scale, the Budget might have been greeted with less acrimony by many workers.
We are in a position where, without a proper prices and incomes policy, we shall embark on something close to free collective chaos. That will result in the loss of more and more jobs.
The Budget is a recipe for more unemployment. It will hit areas such as Merseyside even harder. It will sabotage the work that has been done by organisations representing small business men. Last year alone the Council for Small Industries in Rural Areas advanced loans of £3·46 million, creating 1,700 permanent new jobs. That is far more beneficial in the long term than any number of manpower services commissions, job creation programmes, or any other palliative.
It is important that the Government pay proper attention and care to the creation of long-term jobs and do something about reducing massive unemployment that will only be accentuated as a result of the disgraceful cuts made in rate support grant and the way that they will hit local authorities.

5.50 p.m.

Mr. Mark Wolfson: As I rise with trepidation to make my maiden speech I am reminded of my first speech-making efforts when I worked for the Industrial Society. I spoke to an interested industrial group at a university. I was given a good dinner. I spoke to those present. We had a discussion, which was


open and full. I hope that I answered their questions reasonably well, as most of us do at the conclusion of such evenings. When I left, the young lady treasurer said to me "Mr. Wolfson, what is the fee that we should settle?" I said "There is no fee. The Industrial Society happily pays for this." She said "What about expenses?" I said "There are none of those either." She said "We have been lucky this year. None of our speakers asked for fees or expenses." I remarked that the society's balance sheet must be looking healthy. She replied "Yes." I said "What will happen to the surplus?" She said "Next year we shall offer far higher fees and obtain the services of much better speakers."
Fortunately or unfortunately, there is neither bonus nor fee involved here. There is a flat rate for the job. In spite of today's news, the rate is still far too flat. We shall all be running to stand still. The Boyle recommendation of a salary of £12,000 for Members of Parliament is fair but not over-generous. Its implementation should have been more rapid. The present basic pay of under £7,000 per year for this job is derisory. It is time that Britain, which rightly expects much from its Members of Parliament, came more into line with our European neighbours. The time to do so will never be sufficiently propitious. It will take the courage of all Members of Parliament. We shall have only ourselves to blame if the proper rate is not paid for a proper job. Perhaps, in view of the Government's emphasis on productivity-based deals in wage negotiations elsewhere, we should apply the same criterion here. As a newcomer, my mind boggles at the possible consequences. Paid on the basis of words delivered in the Chamber, how many more Government supporters would gladly pop up to intervene, to question, or make speeches? How many members of the Opposition would follow the example of their hon. Friends sitting below the Gangway and wield a sledgehammer to serve a double winner? We should be here night and day and every weekend.
I wish to refer now to my predecessor who, for nearly 30 years, represented Sevenoaks. In his maiden speech Sir John Rodgers spoke in detail and from

a background of much knowledge about the problems of newsprint supply in postwar Britain. The then President of the Board of Trade replied. Sir John's speech cast an interesting light on Britain 30 years ago. Our newspapers consisted of six pages. In France they consisted of between 12 and 18 pages, and in Belgium of between 12 and 16 pages. Indeed, Sir John said that all the countries in Europe, except Germany behind the Iron Curtain, were better off than ourselves in that matter. Comparisons like that have a familiar ring in many other cases today. I have a feeling of dèjàvu. That speech marked the start of a long and worthwhile career in this House. Sir John Rodgers will always be remembered as one of the pioneers of the European ideal, to which he gave much time and energy. As his successor in this house, I salute him.
The constituency of Sevenoaks is more varied than hon. Members might at first suppose. It has some urban pressures. It has much lovely countryside. My constituents travel by train and car to London, but many work locally in new and growing industries. Community life in the villages and towns is markedly active. Voluntary work by busy working people is much in evidence. I look forward to working here on my constituents' behalf.
Sevenoaks possesses two historic houses, Chartwell and Knowle, which are both owned by the National Trust. There is also Penshurst Place, which is still in the hands of Lord De L'Isle. That is a family trusteeship held from Elizabethan times. I shall speak out in favour of retaining our national heritage in the continuing trusteeship of those families who own and love their homes. Once such houses are open to the public, everyone gains from the care, attention and individuality that such ownership brings to this show of living history. Nationalisation and municipalisation provide no benefit except dull uniformity and higher cost. Partnership between Government and owner, the nation and the public, is the best way of ensuring that we in the present and those of the future benefit most from those who have gone and who worked before.
Now to the business of this debate. Already I have learned the value of hearing in this Chamber about the specific


problems of other hon. Members' constituencies and how legislation has affected—or, they fear, may affect—their situation.
The planned reductions in the budget of the Manpower Services Commission are opposed by members of the Opposition because they argue that they will be detrimental to the prospect of jobs for the long-term unemployed and young people. I speak from some experience of work with young people. For some years I was warden of Brathay Hall, a training centre in the Lake District providing development courses for young men and women from industry and commerce. I remain a trustee of that worthwhile operation. Brathay Hall has benefited in kind from the job creation scheme, in the form of a restored Lakeland barn, now providing additional training facilities. That was opened two years ago by the right hon. Member for Barrow-in-Furness (Mr. Booth) when he was Secretary of State for Employment. Later I worked with the Industrial Society in running its campaign to improve the development and training opportunities for young people at work. As a practising personnel director I am much involved in the practical decisions of business on whether to create new jobs. My point is that it is at the practical working level, the sharp end in business, that the decisions on the retention or otherwise of present jobs and decisions on the creation or not of new jobs will always be made.
The Government, except in a totally controlled Socialist society, can only set the scene. If real, long-lasting and secure jobs are to be created, and it is crucial that they are, business men must have the confidence to create them. The whole strategy of the Budget is based on providing a backdrop against which that confidence can grow. The Budget measures are the first step. Some changes to the Employment Protection Act will be the second, changes to trade union law the third, and the cutting of other controls and red tape imposed on industry is the fourth. That is the kind of package that those who run businesses, those who will have to make decisions about expansion and new jobs, have been looking for.
The Manpower Services Commission special employment measures have helped, and will continue to help, to plug the gap. It is important that the House and the

country appreciate, first, that the cuts are made into the already planned Budget growth; secondly, that the special employment measures continue and are concentrated in those areas and on those individuals whose needs are greatest; thirdly, that the Government are as much concerned as any Opposition Member about the deeply serious effect that unemployment has on individuals and on families, be they young or old.
Unless the decision-taker, in his or her business—be it the director, manager, owner or a self-employed business man—decides to expand and takes the risk to go for a wider market, there never will be the extra jobs that this country so desperately needs and will need in the future.
All the experience I have gained from those to whom I have spoken in my constituency and from my time in employment, tells me that high personal taxation, higher employers' contributions, some aspects of the Employment Protection Act, increased form-filling and reporting procedures—all of which have increased during five years of Labour Government—have militated against that very business confidence which is the only way to achieve long-term job security and new long-term jobs.
We on the Government Benches certainly see a continuing and crucially important role for the Manpower Services Commission in retraining, helping to deal with problem areas and helping those who are specifically disadvantaged because of the changing job scene. The future prospect of changing technology in Britain need not be all gloom. There is the alternative of brighter prospects, more opportunity and a more leisurely life. Given the right challenge, which we ask them to take up, there is no reason why business men, successful, profitable and confident in the Government's long-term intention, should not do much to deal with the problem of unemployment which we are discussing.
I hope that I have stayed within tradition in talking about my constituents and my predecessor. If I have strayed a little outside tradition in making some statements that are, perhaps, controversial, I thank Opposition Members for their kindness in bearing with me. I do not expect them to bear with me so easily in the future.

6.7 p.m.

Mr. George Park: I congratulate the hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. Wolfson) on his maiden speech. We look forward to his future contributions to our debates with interest, although, as he himself remarked, I doubt very much whether we shall be quite so easy on him next time. However, I regard it as a hopeful sign that in this very short debate two Members from Coventry caught your eye. Mr. Deputy Speaker.
I should also like to congratulate the new hon. Member for Coventry, South-West (Mr. Butcher). It is quite clear that he has come to grips with that constituency. I appreciated his kind remarks about my former colleague. Mrs. Audrey Wise.
I echo the hope of the Secretary of State that we will be given further opportunities to discuss this subject. At this early stage in the life of the Government it may be understandable that most of the responses we get sound as if the Government are saying "We have a mandate". Alternatively, we are given bromide answers.
Sooner or later, Ministers will have to give specific answers to matters arising out of their own policy decisions. The Government would be treading on very dangerous ground if they imagined that they had been given not only a mandate but a blank cheque. This is particularly true of their intentions towards the Manpower Services Commission. It is not sufficient, as has been said by many hon. Members on the Government Benches, not least the Prime Minister, to dismiss the activities of the MSC by saying that it is not providing real jobs.
Whatever the state of the economy, new technology will demand that training and retraining assumes even greater importance if we are to cope with the mismatch between the skills or qualities available, or capable of being developed, in the labour force and the skills which employers need and can afford. Training and retraining should be a growth industry. In this context, the reductions in the budget of the MSC can be regarded only as a retrograde step.
In Coventry specifically—and I am not as sanguine as the hon. Member for

Coventry, South-West about the situation—we shall receive no help under the special temporary employment programme—STEP. We have yet to assess fully the impact of national reductions in the youth opportunities scheme, bearing in mind that £52 million will be taken out of a £200 million gross figure. If we are to assess the impact of this cut on Coventry, we need to know what is meant by the statement that provision will be shifted towards less expensive opportunities, what are the reductions in time for which young people remain in the programme, and whether it will be concentrated in designated areas. We need answers to those questions because we are told that those are the ways in which the reduction is to be achieved.
In April 1979, 1,100 young people in Coventry were engaged on programmes funded by the MSC, out of 2,900 unemployed aged between 16 and 18. The situation that will face 4,000 children who are expected to leave school this summer will be made even more difficult. It is important to stress that Coventry may once have been known as the Klondyke, but that is very much in the past tense now.
Nationally, we are expected to believe that community industry can have a reduction of £1 million and still expand. Nor have we been told as yet what is the estimated effect of taking £22·3 million out of the £200 million in the training opportunities scheme, or nearly £10 million from the industrial training boards.
Even in the small firms area, which the Government say they support, this subsidy will no longer be available in Coventry. I do not know what we have done. We are in Coventry. We cannot be sent to Coventry. We are there. But we suffer this effect all the time when it comes to Government support.
For those who doubt the value of the schemes sponsored by the MSC, let me give just one example. Of 160 youngsters who have taken part in work experience schemes at GEC Telecommunications, 90 are now working full-time for the company and a further 20 have been placed in full-time jobs.
Conservative Members have said time and again that uncertainty is the enemy of confidence; and confidence is essential


to success in any endeavour. The Government must, therefore, remove any uncertainty as to the effects of their policy decisions on the MSC and, in particular, its Coventry context.
I realise that it does not come within the responsibilities of the Secretary of State for Employment, but the uncertainty about the future of the National Enterprise Board adds to the anxiety in Coventry, where one-fifth of the manufacturing work force are employed in companies funded by the NEB.
The fact is that since 1975 more than 78,000 people have been helped in the West Midlands by the MSC in an attempt to counteract the decline in job opportunities in our more traditional industries. But, if the Government do not like and want to curtail the present activities of the MSC, are they prepared to sponsor and encourage jobs in new industries, to which reference has been made, or in the overstretched public services or in industrial activities which are concerned with providing for home consumption rather than exports?
Although the Secretary of State indicated at Question Time on Tuesday that the West Midlands would need to pull itself up by its own bootstraps, is he prepared, as far as it lies within his responsibility, to support the suggestion of the economic planning council to set up a West Midlands industrial centre to channel the scientific and technological resources of our universities and polytechnics into the region's industrial future?
If clear answers are not forthcoming, we can only assume that the Government are intent on returning to a nineteenth-century philosophy which ignores the fact that, politics aside, the march of technology will bring social consequences which a market economy is not geared to cope with; and their mandate will come to an end.

6.15 p.m.

Mr. Alan Haselhurst: I am happy to be the first speaker from the Conservative Benches to compliment my hon. Friends the Members for Coventry, South-West (Mr. Butcher) and Sevenoaks (Mr. Wolfson) on their admirable maiden speeches. Both of them delivered their speeches with con-

siderable effectiveness and revealed, in their individual ways, that they were speaking from deep experience of the matters we are discussing this afternoon. I have no doubt that the Government side of the House has gained greatly by their arrival here. We look forward to hearing their contributions on future occasions.
I am tempted to take up for a moment or two the remarks with which my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks prefaced his speech, remarks about another subject which has been raised today, but I shall refrain from doing so, Mr. Deputy Speaker, lest I should incur your disapproval. Therefore, I turn to the substantive matter before us.
In the debate on the Gracious Speech, I said that I wondered how long it would be before the Opposition suddenly discovered something extremely iniquitous in the level of unemployment in the country. It has not taken them long. After only six weeks or so out of office, they are now able, apparently, so far to forget the period for which they were responsible that they can put down a motion which is critical of the Government over unemployment. It requires considerable audacity for Labour right hon. and hon. Members to choose this subject so early in their life as the Opposition.
In any case, I have absolutely no difficulty in rejecting the motion simply opposing the Government's decision
to reduce the budget of the Manpower Services Commission which will injure the prospects of jobs for the long-term unemployed",
because I do not think that this is what lies at the heart of the unemployment problem. The Opposition's fire is misdirected if they believe that the action taken by the Government will be seriously injurious to employment.
What matters most concerning employment prospects is the health of the economy and the conditions for employment generally in the country. I have no doubt that the Government are right in their approach on taxation and with respect to amendments to the Employment Protection Act to encourage employment.
We have debated on other occasions what it is that persuades employers to employ more people. There has been dispute between the two major political


parties. But it still remains my clear conviction, gained from talking to many employers, that the conditions that existed under the previous Government were acting as a directly inhibiting effect on employers' taking on more people. I am now hopeful that the changes that are being made in taxation and in the Employment Protection Act will create a new climate which will enable more people to be employed without special measures being necessary.
However, I recognise that the timing is important. I would not pretend for a moment that there will not be an unemployment problem which needs attention.
Linked with the question of the unemployed is the question of those who are employed but have had no kind of contact with the education service since they left formal education or who have had no kind of training. Any approach must link the needs of the unemployed and the needs of those who are in employment but have received no training. At present, in the age range 16 to 18, about 10 per cent. are unemployed, but 37 per cent. are in work but without any kind of training. Those two matters must be examined. It is on that basis that we construct a sensible programme for dealing with the residual problem of unemployment.
I am concerned that the Opposition should concentrate their fire on action taken by the present Government with regard to the MSC. One of my worries about the proposals that came forth from the previous Government is that they proposed one idea after another as a temporary measure, without any real rationale behind it. Most of the measures that they introduced were called temporary, and there is no doubt that the Labour Government did not believe that the unemployment they faced would last for very long.
It is not necessary in showing one's concern about unemployment to defend to the last degree all the measures introduced by the previous Government. Those measures were brought out one after another and did not always link up. The programme for dealing with the unemployed or those with inadequate training was not coherent or rational. We must adopt a different approach. Shaving

money from the Manpower Services Commission does not necessarily directly harm the prospects of a more positive and sensible programme for dealing with such people.
I shall consider first careers. It is difficult to speak about that subject without crossing departmental boundaries. Not enough is done to help people to choose the job for which they have the greatest aptitude and in which they would be happiest. The attention of young people is not sufficiently directed to the jobs available in their areas. It is not true that in all areas of the country there are no job prospects. It is alarming that many employers cannot fill posts. Applicants often do not have adequate qualifications for the job.
There is an antipathetic feeling towards industry which has not sufficiently been overcome. Initiatives have been taken—some by industry itself—to improve industry's image and make known to children at school the kind of jobs open to them. There are, however, insufficient links between firms and schools, and the responsibility lies with industry to try to overcome that.
Some people in the education service may be a little suspicious, but industry needs qualified people. Local companies can play a bigger part in selling themselves to young people.
When firms take on new recruits there should be a better induction programme. Often if there is such a programme the induction lasts for only a day or two. It is unsatisfactory in modern industrial conditions to expect people to acclimatise to a totally new atmosphere in such a short period. We must find a better means, through careers training and induction, to help young people seeking employment.
How is that to be done and how can it be financed? The Government are not solely responsible. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks that the Government's responsibility is to set the scene. I hope that the measures taken by the Government will do just that, but the various schemes produced under the special programmes of the Manpower Services Commission do not add up to a suitably coherent programme.
It is disappointing that the Commission's schemes—and in particular the youth opportunities programme—lack


educational or training content. The majority of places are allocated to on-the-job training courses. The amount of educational training is small.
I question whether the Commission is spending money sensibly. It seems to be falling well short of providing for a well-trained work force. Many industrialists would say that there have been enough demands on industry, but it should play a bigger part in training the young people whom it will need in the future.
We must find the right connection between the education system and life at work. That is important at present. People will then be trained to do the type of job that is available and will be able to understand the environment in which they are to operate.
Industry must be brought much more into the training process, and its contribution must be increased. Not everyone will be able to work in industry because of the effects on manufacturing of such technological developments as the silicon chip. Manufacturing industry will employ fewer people in the future, although that still leaves plenty of opportunity in service industries. Not everyone can look forward to training in a skill related to manufacturing industry. We must consider how people can be trained to do the jobs that will be available and be given the skills to cope with the general problems of industrial life as adults.
The role of the voluntary organisations should be given more consideration. The Manpower Services Commission was used by the previous Government to operate a series of special programmes. It largely bypassed the bodies that existed and that might have contributed to the training. The role of those organisations should be reassessed, because many could provide courses that would be relevant to youngsters who cannot acquire skills for a career in industry. That is the direction in which the Government should be looking. The Government should not nail their flag to the Commission and say that all its work is automatically right and that any adjustment will harm the unemployed.
There must be a new approach if we are to have a well-equipped work force to deal with our future needs. I recognise that there is a problem of managing the balance between the numbers of people seeking employment—which will rise in the next few years—and the number of

jobs available. To judge by the nature of the jobs that will be available, more training will be required. That may mean delaying the commencement of full-time employment until youngsters are equipped properly and effectively to do the jobs available.
If the Government base their approach on that kind of thinking, they will do the best service they can to the unemployed and untrained. It is better to adopt that line of action than simply to accept what the Government inherited and say that it is so good that it cannot be changed.

6.28 p.m.

Mr. Arthur Davidson: I am concerned about the effects of the cuts to which the right hon. Gentleman has referred on an intermediate area such as North-East Lancashire. It has long been a bone of contention that North-East Lancashire has not been given development area status. It is a criticism that I have made to successive Governments.
Aid has been concentrated in development and special development areas, although measures such as temporary employment subsidies and STEP have been invaluable to North-East Lancashire in creating and maintaining jobs. Without those measures, the differential between areas such as North-East Lancashire and those with development area status would be further widened.
I believe that the Secretary of State was making a mistake—one that has been made by successive Governments—in viewing the problems of an area purely and simply on the unemployment statistics. There are certain areas, such as North-East Lancashire, which have particular problems, notably the drift away of young people, so the unemployment statistics are not a true and accurte assessment of the problems of the area.
I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will be flexible and will not concentrate aid on development areas and special development areas to the exclusion of areas such as North-East Lancashire.

6.31 p.m.

Mr. John Golding: I warmly welcome back to the House my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Clark), who delivered his second maiden speech in a courteous manner. I was also pleased to hear the speech of the hon. Member for Liverpool,


Edge Hill (Mr. Alton) and those of the hon. Members for Coventry, South-West (Mr. Butcher) and for Sevenoaks (Mr. Wolfson), who made contributions that were such that we shall listen to them with great interest in the future.
I am sorry that my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Accrington (Mr. Davidson) did not have time to develop his argument about the problems of the intermediate areas. Had he done so, he would have done credit to the subject, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry. North-East (Mr. Park). I was interested to hear from the hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. Haselhurst), but I wondered why he did not echo the severe criticisms that he heard the other evening from the British Youth Council. I wondered why his defence of the Government was not delivered face to face to the representatives of the council, who are in the House today. We are debating these cuts which are an act of social vandalism.

Mr. Haselhurst: rose—

Mr. Golding: No, I shall not give way. The Government are guilty of putting the boot into the youth opportunities programme and reducing the special temporary employment programme by well over half, stealing it away from many of our constituencies. They are also slashing proposed new places in community industry and cutting support for industrial training. In addition, the cuts have led to the mutilation of both the small firms employment subsidy and the temporary short-term working compensation scheme, as well as the abandonment of the restructuring subsidy.
I feel like someone who has built something with care and then has to watch hooligans mindlessly smashing his work. That is how I have felt as I have watched the Government in their first few weeks at the Department of Employment.
Why have the Tory Government done this? Is it because the problem of unemployment will decrease? Of course not. Although it is not clear whether the Secretary of State has seen the Treasury forecast of 2 million unemployed, or whether he agrees with that figure, it is clear that he expects unemployment to rise. In these circumstances, I would have expected more and not less effort

to be put in to reducing the impact of unemployment.
That was the attitude of my right hon. Friend the Member for Barrow-in-Furness (Mr. Booth). He saw the Treasury forecasts and made certain, through special measures and through schemes which are now being wrecked, that the Treasury was proved wrong. It is not because the problem of unemployment is less or because the amount of individual hardship will fall. It is not that the economic waste will disappear or that the need to support industrial training will diminish. It is not for any of these reasons that the right hon. Gentleman has succumbed to the pressure from the Prime Minister for £170 million worth of cuts in the Department of Employment group.
The choice facing the Secretary of State was either his own redundancy or the unemployment of thousands of other people. The Prime Minister, stubbornly believing that the answer to our problems is to make the rich richer still and make those not so well off pay the price, has completely undermined much of the good work done by the previous Government in co-operation with the Manpower Services Commission. This work, incidentally, was generally supported by the Secretary of State when he was in Opposition.
In pursuing the Prime Minister's policies, the Secretary of State must recognise that he is denying young people the chance that they deserve and that they would have had if Labour had won the general election. The Prime Minister's policy to inflict hardship on so many individuals and families is a savage way of treating so many very vulnerable young people. When the right hon. Gentleman receives the thanks of his rich friends for the tax cuts, may he also hear the curses of those condemned, as a consequence, to unemployment. Those curses will be echoed by the careers service which, together with the Manpower Services Commission, has worked so hard over the last two or three years to give all our young people a fair chance to work at a time of heavy recession.
I suspect that the right hon. Gentleman does not really believe in the arguments that he puts forward. From time to time he sneers about schemes that we introduced because they were not all about creating jobs. He implies that


only permanent job creation is worth while. But in practice he has kept intact the job release scheme, and thank goodness for that. But the job release scheme itself does not create another job. The right hon. Gentleman keeps other schemes as well which do not create jobs, even though he has not kept them intact. I refer here to schemes such as the youth opportunities programme and the special temporary employment programme. Why does he keep them? I believe that, despite the philosophy of the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State sees value in these schemes. He knows that they train many for work and make people more acceptable to employers. He has seen that these schemes are able to restore the morale of the unemployed themselves and make them more capable of doing a hard day's work. Because he sees value in these schemes, he puts forward very half-baked arguments in favour of the cuts.
I do not believe the right hon. Gentleman can face the truth of the Government's position, which seeks to take away employment and training from the young in order to provide additional luxury for very much richer people. How can the right hon. Gentleman justify reducing the planned provision of community industry from 7,000 to 6,000 places in order to save £1 million? The Government should provide at least 7,000 places, and probably many more, to satisfy the needs expressed by local authorities in towns throughout the country for jobs for those who will always find it difficult to obtain work.
The cut in the special temporary employment programme of £42·2 million is savage. To slash the programme from 30,000 to 35,000 places to a target of 12,000 to 14,000 places and to confine it to certain special areas is to inflict great harm on many of our young unemployed—those in the 19 to 25 age group. Given the size of the problem, the Labour Government's provision was inadequate. We knew that. We had to wait to expand, however, until the Manpower Services Commission had successfully launched the youth opportunities programme for the 16- to 18-year-olds, because the MSC told us that it could not tackle both at once.
The scheme should now be expanded rather than cut, and should remain nationwide. What justification is there

for taking it way from many towns and localities with high rates of youth unemployment—some very high—just because they are not in special development areas, development areas and designated inner city areas?
I suppose that the cut of £22·3 million in TOPS was, however regrettable, predictable—as was the introduction of charges for some direct training services to firms in assisted areas. The reduction of £9·8 million in funding to the industrial training boards certainly was not. How can we afford to undermine the training effort at present? Perhaps the Minister will tell the House what training grants have been affected and say how this will improve our competitive position.
In cutting over £25 million from the youth opportunities programme the Government may be making it impossible for the MSC and the careers service, which is in the front line, to meet their objective—that is, to provide an opportunity for each youngster who leaves school and indeed for every youngster, including those who have left school in earlier years who have been unemployed for a year or more.
On Tuesday the British Youth Council warned that the cut will lead to a reduction in the number in the programme at the peak and to a marked fall-off in quality. Perhaps the Minister will comment on the observations of that council. I personally warn the Government that the objectives of the youth opportunities programme will not be met by shifting provision to the cheapest possible opportunities. They can be met only when the right—not the cheapest—balance of opportunities is available. From all I have learned so far, it will be the rough and tumble youngsters throughout the country who will suffer the most. I refer to those youngsters whom employers and sponsors want the least, and the youngsters for whom we shall have to make provision, directly through the agency of the MSC, together with the careers service.
I do not think the right hon. Gentleman knows what he has done with the youth opportunities programme. I think he will find out in December, January and February of next year when youngsters are suffering very greatly and when he sees a crisis of morale in the careers


service and the MSC. At that point he will see the damage he is inflicting on the programme.
I hope that the Government will have serious second thoughts about the cuts which they have imposed—not on the MSC, but on the unemployed and particularly our young unemployed. I hope that they will restore those cuts before they do too much damage.

6.45 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Employment (Mr. Jim Lester): It is a pleasure to think that in this important debate we have had three maiden speeches, and one returned. I welcome the remarks of the hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Clark) on behalf of his constituency. I must tell him, in the kindest possible way, that in May 1974 the unemployment rate in his constituency was 2,988 and in May 1979 it was 4,966, an increase of 60 per cent. That is why the present Government won the election and are now seeking to find other ways of curing that problem. The measures we are operating, including the youth opportunities programme, are being expanded in such areas as the hon. Gentleman's but broadly in proportion to the numbers of unemployed young people in that region. I hope to visit the region in the near future to examine some of the work that is being carried out.
We very much appreciated the excellent speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, South-West (Mr. Butcher). As a Member who also has a university interest, I appreciate his remarks about the ginger group, and particularly about football teams. This is a success that Nottingham shares with Merseyside, because when Merseyside is not winning one of the prizes, we are winning one of the other three. I appreciate his concern about unemployment problems and I thought he made an excellent contribution to the debate.
We then had a maiden speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. Wolfson), a member of the Industrial Society. He is welcome to the small bank of Members of Parliament with industrial experience and I am sure that his remarks in this debate will make a useful impact on future debates, especially in the area of training relative to jobs.
The last maiden speech in this debate is of course my own contribution from the Government Front Bench. I wish first to confirm our general attitude to manpower programmes and the special employment measures. I wish to introduce some balance into the debate, especially following the choice of words of the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Golding). It was a Conservative Government who set up the Manpower Services Commission, and we continue to attach importance to the involvement of the TUC and the CBI, through the Commission, in the operation of manpower programmes and to the employment and training programmes operated by the Commission, especially in relation to our key objectives in reversing industrial decline. We therefore have no intention of abolishing the Commission or of radically cutting back the programe which it operates.
On the other hand, there was an exceptionally rapid expansion of the Commission's training and employment programmes under the previous Government, running alongside the new demands on the new Commission to operate large special employment programmes for the young and long-term unemployed. This called for an equally rapid expansion in the public expenditure required for the Commission's programmes. Following this, it seemed to us that a period of consolidation is required, as my hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. Haselhurst) suggested. This is to ensure that the manpower programmes are developed in the most cost-effective ways and also in relation to our objective of reversing our industrial decline and creating the conditions for faster growth, which we all agree is the only way in which to achieve a lasting solution to the problems of unemployment. This point was not dealt with in any detailed way by Opposition Members.
We agree that, for example, we need to ensure that industrial training programmes are focused on the key skills that will be required in the future, and that programmes for young people are designed to ease the transition from school to work and to assist unemployed young people as quickly as possible into permanent jobs. That is a point upon which we place great importance. I welcomed particularly the speech by my hon.


Friend the Member for Saffron Walden. He has great knowledge about the matter.
Therefore, the public expenditure cuts that have been made in the Manpower Services Commission do not radically change the Commission's programmes but represent some pruning and reshaping of earlier plans. For example, the modernisation of the employment services will proceed next year with the opening of a further 100 jobcentres—hardly a cutback. The training opportunities scheme will continue with broadly the same level of activity as in 1978 and 1979, with the places for the training of technicians, the main computer-related occupations and the main craft occupations in skillcentres remaining largely unaffected. There will be no reduction in disabled people's training.
We have adopted a similar approach to the special employment measures as to the MSC's employment and training programmes—that is, not to abolish, but to prune, some of the plans for the programmes. The full range of special measures will continue to operate this year, but some of them will be more sharply focused on areas of high unemployment in particular need of the assistance that the measures provide. The changes that we have made to some of the measures does not mean that unemployment will increase as the cuts relate to planned expansions. Therefore, over the year we expect the impact of the special measures programme to increase—after a year under the previous Government when the impact fell.

Mr. Park: I appreciate that, in the short time that the Minister has at his disposal, he cannot be expected to answer specific questions in detail. However, I should like to ask him if he would be good enough to let me know—possibly by mail—the overall implications for Coventry.

Mr. Lester: I give that undertaking. I shall be delighted to write to the hon. Gentleman.
Labour Members should welcome the concentration on areas which they represent. Surely, it is right to review the results with the object of greater success in Merseyside, the North-East of England and the West Coast of Scotland. So far, solutions in those areas have eluded both

Labour and Conservative Governments. The areas still face major changes in their industrial base and the technological changes yet to come. The Government wish to recreate the dynamism in those areas which originally made them what they are.
The hon. Member for Liverpool, Edge Hill (Mr. Alton) represents an area which I have visited and hope to visit again shortly. The hon. Gentleman got his figures wrong—he doubled the expenditure of the youth opportunities programme. It was rather strange for him to criticise the cuts in a body which I understood him to want to abolish. We intend to keep intact the job release scheme, as the hon. Member for New-castle-under-Lyme mentioned. We see that as creating permanent jobs for the future.

Mr. Golding: Will the Minister state what jobs are created?

Mr. Lester: If the hon. Gentleman had waited, I would have provided him with an answer to that question. If a person retires, his job will be a new one for someone coming off the unemployment list. That will create a permanent job. None of the other measures which we have been discussing will do that.
We share the concern expressed by all hon. Members about unemployment. We are all aware of the effect that it has upon individuals, families and whole areas of the country. We are also concerned about the grim outlook which we inherited from the previous Government. We might be more inclined to accept the advice of right hon. and hon. Members opposite if their policies had shown any signs of reversing our industrial decline. But we know that during the last five years, over which they presided, the decline continued and accelerated with unemployment doubling to the current level. For far too long the United Kingdom economy had been in decline in relation to other countries. If that had continued, the unemployment prospect in the years ahead would have remained gloomy indeed.
There is only one way to tackle the unemployment problem and that is to create the conditions for faster growth and improved industrial performance. That is the way to create more permanent jobs


and lower levels of unemployment. Pumping more and more expenditure into manpower programmes is no substitute for the underlying improvement that we must achieve in our economic performance. That is why we need the new strategy that we have embarked on, to check and reverse our industrial decline. That is why we are determined to strengthen incentives, to enlarge freedom of choice for the individual and to reduce the role of the State, to reduce the burden of financing the public sector and to ensure, so far as possible, that those who take part in collective bargaining understand the consequences of their action.
It is in this context that we decided to find some savings in the rapidly expanding Manpower Services Commission programmes and the special employment measures, but it does not mean that we do not attach importance to those programmes. We accept that the programmes can play an important part in ensuring that workers are equipped with the skills that they and the economy will need in the years ahead and in ensuring that workers are assisted in finding suitable employment. We accept that at a time of high unemployment the special employment programmes operated by the MSC and by the Department of Employment have an important role to play in providing jobs or training opportunities for those who would otherwise be unemployed—such as unemployed young people and the long-term unemployed—and in areas of particularly high unemployment where the need is greatest.
We also see that these programmes make it easier for workers to accept technological change on which future employment prospects depend. No one can underestimate the impact of technological

change. The micro-chip has been mentioned in the debate—indeed, it is an "in" thing for hon. Members to mention micro-chips in almost all their speeches. It is as if it were "micro-chips with everything". Few of us have the opportunity to understand the impact of technological change. So many hon. Members are tied up with affairs at the House and constituency duties. Our contact with micro-chips is from reading reports and attending select conferences. Few people have yet come to terms with technological change.

In that context it is inevitable that we should have flexible policies and that we should be prepared to re-examine the sort of schemes that have been created in the special sense that the last Government created them. In the futuure we shall have to be open-minded and flexible because it is hard to assess either the impact of technological change or the changes in the world which vary day by day.

The real acid test in this country is that manpower measures in themselves, as the previous Government found, cannot provide a real or lasting solution to the underlying unemployment problem. A new approach is needed to reverse our industrial decline, which has proceeded unchecked for far too many years.

The tax changes in the Budget—a Budget produced rapidly—represent the first step in the new approach which the Government are determined to pursue. A new climate must be created in which industry and commerce can flourish. That is the way to increase our living standards and provide the extra jobs that we all seek to reduce unemployment.

Question put:—

The House divided: Ayes 244, Noes 304.

Division No. 16]
AYES
[7.00 p.m.


Abse, Leo
Boothroyd, Miss Betty
Cartwright, John


Adams, Allen
Bottomley, Rt. Hon. Arthur (M'brough)
Clark, David (South Shields)


Allaun, Frank
Bradley, Tom
Cocks, Rt. Hon. Michael (Bristol S)


Alton, David
Bray, Dr. Jeremy
Cohen, Stanley


Anderson, Donald
Brown, Hugh D. (Provan)
Coleman, Donald


Archer, Rt. Hon. Peter
Brown, Robert C. (Newcastle W)
Concannon, Rt. Hon. J. D.


Armstrong, Ernest
Brown, Ronald W. (Hackney S)
Conlan, Bernard


Ashley, Jack
Brown, Ron (Edinburgh, Leith)
Cowans, Harry


Ashton, Joe
Buchan, Norman
Cox, Tom (Wandsworth, Tooting)


Atkinson, Norman (H'gey, Tott'ham)
Callaghan, Rt. Hon. J. (Cardiff SE)
Crowther, J. S.


Barnett, Guy (Greenwich)
Callaghan, Jim (Middleton &amp; P)
Cryer, Bob


Barnett, Rt. Hon. Joel (Heywood)
Campbell, Ian
Cunliffe, Lawrence


Benn, Rt. Hon. Anthony Wedgwood
Campbell-Savours, Dale
Cunningham, George (Islington S)


Bennett, Andrew (Stockport N)
Canavan, Dennis
Cunningham, Dr. John (Whitehaven)


Bidwell, Sydney
Carmichael, Neil
Davidson, Arthur


Booth, Rt. Hon. Albert
Carter-Jones, Lewis
Davies, Rt. Hon. Denzil (Llanelli)




Davies, E. Hudson (Caerphilly)
Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen North)
Race, Reg


Davies, Ifor (Gower)
Janner, Hon. Greville
Radice, Giles


Davis, Clinton (Hackney Central)
Jay, Rt. Hon. Douglas
Rees, Rt. Hon. Merlyn (Leeds South)


Davis, Terry (B'rm'ham, Stechford)
John, Brynmor
Richardson, Miss Jo


Deakins, Eric
Johnson, James (Hull West)
Roberts, Albert (Normanton)


Dean, Joseph (Leeds West)
Johnson, Walter (Derby South)
Roberts, Allan (Bootle)


Dempsey, James
Johnston, Russell (Inverness)
Roberts, Ernest (Hackney North)


Dewar, Donald
Jones, Alec (Rhondda)
Roberts, Gwilym (Cannock)


Dixon, Donald
Jones, Barry (East Flint)
Robertson, George


Dobson, Frank
Kaufman, Rt. Hon. Gerald
Robinson, Geoffrey (Coventry N. W.)


Dormand, J. D.
Kerr, Russell
Rodgers, Rt. Hon. William


Douglas, Dick
Kilroy-Silk, Robert
Rooker, J. W.


Douglas-Mann, Bruce
Lambie, David
Ross, Ernest (Dundee West)


Dubs, Alfred
Lamborn, Harry
Ross, Stephen (Isle of Wight)


Duffy, A. E. P.
Lamond, James
Rowlands, Ted


Dunn, James A. (Liverpool, Kirkdale)
Leadbitter, Ted
Sandelson, Neville


Dunnett, Jack
Leighton, Ronald
Sever, John


Dunwoody, Mrs. Gwyneth
Lestor, Miss Joan (Eton &amp; Slough)
Shore, Rt. Hon. Peter (Step and Pop)


Eadie, Alex
Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)
Short, Mrs. Renée


Eastham, Ken
Lofthouse, Geoffrey
Silkin, Rt. Hon. John (Deptford)


Edwards, Robert (Wolv S. E.)
Lyon, Alexander (York)
Silkin, Rt. Hon. S. C. (Dulwich)


Ellis, Raymond (N. E. Derbyshire)
Mabon, Rt. Hon. Dr. J. Dickson
Silverman, Julius


Ellis, Tom (Wrexham)
McDonald, Dr. Oonagh
Skinner, Dennis


English, Michael
McElhone, Frank
Smith, Rt. Hon. J. (North Lanarkshire)


Ennals, Rt. Hon. David
McKay, Allen (Penistone)
Snape, Peter


Evans, Ioan (Aberdare)
McKelvey, William
Soley, Clive


Evans, John (Newton)
MacKenzie, Rt. Hon. Gregor
Spearing, Nigel


Field, Frank
Maclennan, Robert
Spriggs, Leslie


Fitch, Alan
McMillan, Tom (Glasgow, Central)
Stallard, A. W.


Fitt, Gerard
McNally, Thomas
Stewart, Rt. Hon. Donald (W Isles)


Flannery, Martin
McWilliam, John
Stoddart, David


Fletcher, L. R. (Ilkeston)
Magee, Bryan
Stott, Roger



Marks, Kenneth
Strang, Gavin


Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)
Marshall, David (Gl'sgow, Shettles'n)
Straw, Jack


Foot, Rt. Hon. Michael
Marshall, Dr. Edmund (Goole)
Summerskill, Hon. Dr. Shirley


Ford, Ben
Marshall, Jim (Leicester South)
Taylor, Mrs. Ann (Bolton West)


Forrester, John
Martin, Michael (Gl'gow, Springb'rn)
Thomas, Mike (Newcastle East)


Foster, Derek
Mason, Rt. Hon. Roy
Thomas, Dr. Roger (Carmarthen)


Foulkes, George
Maxton, John
Thorne, Stan (Preston South)


Fraser, John (Lambeth, Norwood)
Maynard, Miss Joan
Tilley, John


Freeson, Rt. Hon. Reginald
Meacher, Michael
Torney, Tom


Freud, Clement
Mellish, Rt. Hon. Robert
Varley, Rt. Hon. Eric G.


Garrett, John (Norwich S)
Mikardo, Ian
Wainwright, Edwin (Dearne Valley)


Garrett, W. E. (Wallsend)
Millan, Rt. Hon. Bruce
Walker, Harold (Doncaster)


George, Bruce
Mitchell, Austin (Grimsby)
Watkins, David


Gilbert, Rt. Hon. Dr. John
Mitchell, R. C. (Soton, Itchen)
Weetch, Ken


Ginsburg, David
Morris, Rt. Hon. Alfred (Wythenshawe)
Wellbeloved, James


Golding, John
Morris, Rt. Hon. Charles (Openshaw)
Welsh, Michael


Gourlay, Harry
Morris, Rt. Hon. John (Aberavon)
White, Frank R. (Bury &amp; Radcliffe)


Graham, Ted
Morton, George
White, James (Glasgow, Pollok)


Grant, George (Morpeth)
Moyle, Rt. Hon. Roland
Whitlock, William


Grant, John (Islington C)
Mulley, Rt. Hon. Frederick
Willey, Rt. Hon. Frederick


Hamilton, James (Bothwell)
Newens, Stanley
Williams, Rt. Hon. Alan (Swansea W)


Hamilton, W. W. (Central Fife)
Oakes, Gordon
Williams, Sir Thomas (Warrington)


Harrison, Rt. Hon. Walter
Ogden, Eric
Wilson, Gordon (Dundee East)


Hattersley, Rt. Hon. Roy
O'Halloran, Michael
Wilson, Rt. Hon. Sir Harold (Huyton)


Haynes, David
O'Neill, Martin
Wilson, William (Coventry S. E.)


Healey, Rt. Hon. Denis
Orme, Rt. Hon. Stanley
Winnick, David


Heffer, Eric S.
Owen, Rt. Hon. Dr. David
Woodall, Alec


Hogg, Norman (E Dunbartonshire)
Palmer, Arthur
Woolmer, Kenneth


Holland, Stuart (L'beth, Vauxhall)
Park, George
Wrigglesworth, Ian


Homewood, William
Parker, John
Wright, Miss Sheila


Hooley, Frank
Parry, Robert
Young, David (Bolton East)


Horam, John
Pendry, Tom



Howell, Rt. Hon. Denis (B'ham, Sm H)
Powell, Raymond (Ogmore)
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Huckfield, Les
Prescott, John
Mr. Hugh McCartney and


Hughes, Mark (Durham)
Price, Christopher (Lewisham West)
Mr. James Tinn.




NOES


Adley, Robert
Berry, Hon. Anthony
Brittan, Leon


Aitken, Jonathan
Best, Keith
Brocklebank-Fowler, Christopher


Alexander, Richard
Bevan, David Gilroy
Brooke, Hon. Peter


Alison, Michael
Biffen, Rt. Hon. John
Brotherton, Michael


Amery, Rt. Hon. Julian
Blackburn, John
Brown, Michael (Brigg &amp; Sc'thorpe)


Ancram, Michael
Blaker, Peter
Browne, John (Winchester)


Arnold, Tom
Body, Richard
Bruce-Gardyne, John


Aspinwall, Jack
Bonsor, Sir Nicholas
Bryan, Sir Paul


Atkins, Robert (Preston North)
Boscawen, Hon. Robert
Budgen, Nick


Baker, Kenneth (St. Marylebone)
Bottomley, Peter (Woolwich West)
Bulmer, Esmond


Baker, Nicholas (North Dorset)
Bowden, Andrew
Burden, F. A.


Bell, Ronald
Boyson, Dr. Rhodes
Butcher, John


Bendall, Vivian
Braine, Sir Bernard
Butler, Hon. Adam


Benyon, Thomas (Abingdon)
Bright, Graham
Cadbury, Jocelyn


Benyon, W. (Buckingham)
Brinton, Timothy
Carlisle, John (Luton West)







Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)
Hogg, Hon. Douglas (Grantham)
Osborn, John


Carlisle, Rt. Hon. Mark (Runcorn)
Holland, Philip (Carlton)
Page, Rt. Hon. R. Graham (Crosby)


Chalker, Mrs. Lynda
Hooson, Tom
Parkinson, Cecil


Channon, Paul
Hordern, Peter
Parris, Matthew


Chapman, Sydney
Howe, Rt. Hon. Sir Geoffrey
Patten, Christopher (Bath)


Churchill, W. S.
Howell, Rt. Hon. David (Guildford)
Patten, John (Oxford)


Clark, Hon. Alan (Plymouth, Sutton)
Howell, Ralph (North Norfolk)
Pattie, Geoffrey


Clark, William (Croydon South)
Hunt, David (Wirral)
Pawsey, James


Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)
Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)
Peyton, Rt. Hon. John


Clegg, Walter
Hurd, Hon. Douglas
Pink, R. Bonner


Cockeram, Eric
Irving, Charles (Cheltenham)
Pollock, Alexander


Colvin, Michael
Jenkin, Rt. Hon. Patrick
Porter, George


Cope, John
Johnson Smith, Geoffrey
Prentice, Rt. Hon. Reg


Cormack, Patrick
Jopling, Rt. Hon. Michael
Price, David (Eastleigh)


Corrie, John
Joseph, Rt. Hon. Sir Keith
Prior, Rt. Hon. James


Costain, A. P.
Kaberry, Sir Donald
Proctor, K. Harvey


Cranborne, Viscount
Kellett-Bowman, Mrs. Elaine
Raison, Timothy


Crouch, David
Kimball, Marcus
Rathbone, Tim


Dean, Paul (North Somerset)
King, Rt. Hon. Tom
Rees, Peter (Dover and Deal)


Dickens, Geoffrey
Kitson, Sir Timothy
Rees-Davies, W. R.


Dodsworth, Geoffrey
Knight, Mrs. Jill
Renton, Tim


Dorrell, Stephen
Knox, David
Rhodes James, Robert


Dover, Denshore
Lamont, Norman
Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon


du Cann, Rt. Hon. Edward
Lang, Ian
Ridley, Hon. Nicholas


Dunn, Robert (Dartford)
Latham, Michael
Ridsdale, Julian


Durant, Tony
Lawrence, Ivan
Rifkind, Malcolm


Dykes, Hugh
Lawson, Nigel
Rippon, Rt. Hon. Geoffrey


Eden, Rt. Hon. Sir John
Lee, John
Roberts, Michael (Cardiff NW)


Edwards, Rt. Hon. N. (Pembroke)
Le Marchant, Spencer
Roberts, Wyn (Conway)


Eggar, Timothy
Lennox-Boyd, Hon. Mark
Rossi, Hugh


Elliott, Sir William
Lester, Jim (Beeston)
Rost, Peter


Emery, Peter
Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)
Royle, Sir Anthony


Eyre, Reginald
Lloyd, Ian (Havant &amp; Waterloo)
Sainsbury, Hon. Timothy


Fairbairn, Nicholas
Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)
St. John-Stevas, Rt. Hon. Norman


Faith, Mrs. Sheila
Loveridge, John
Scott, Nicholas


Farr, John
Lyell, Nicholas
Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)


Fell, Anthony
McAdden, Sir Stephen
Shaw, Michael (Scarborough)


Fenner, Mrs. Peggy
McCrindle, Robert
Shelton, William (Streatham)


Finsberg, Geoffrey
Macfarlane, Neil
Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)


Fisher, Sir Nigel
MacGregor, John
Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge-Br'hills)


Fletcher, Alexander (Edinburgh N)
Mackay, John (Argyll)
Shersby, Michael


Fletcher-Cooke, Charles
Macmillan, Rt. Hon. M. (Farnham)
Silvester, Fred


Fookes, Miss Janet
McNair-Wilson, Michael (Newbury)
Sims, Roger


Forman, Nigel
McNair-Wilson, Patrick (New Forest)
Skeet, T. H. H.


Fowler, Rt. Hon. Norman
McQuarrie, Albert
Smith, Dudley (War. and Leam'ton)


Fox, Marcus
Madel, David
Speed, Keith


Fraser, Rt. Hon. H. (Stafford &amp; St)
Major, John
Speller, Tony



Marland, Paul
Spence, John


Fraser, Peter (South Angus)
Marlow, Antony
Spicer, Jim (West Dorset)


Fry, Peter
Marshall, Michael (Arundel)
Spicer, Michael (S Worcestershire)


Galbraith, Hon. T. G. D.
Marten, Neil (Banbury)
Sproat, Iain


Gardiner, George (Reigate)
Mates, Michael
Squire, Robin


Gardner, Edward (South Fylde)
Mather, Carol
Stanbrook, Ivor


Garel-Jones, Tristan
Maude, Rt. Hon. Angus
Stanley, John


Gilmour, Rt. Hon. Sir Ian
Mawby, Ray
Steen, Anthony


Glyn, Dr. Alan
Mawhinney, Dr. Brian
Stevens, Martin


Goodhew, Victor
Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin
Stewart, Ian (Hitchin)


Goodlad, Alastair
Mayhew, Patrick
Stewart, John (East Renfrewshire)


Gorst, John
Mellor, David
Stokes, John


Gow, Ian
Meyer, Sir Anthony
Stradling Thomas, J.


Gower, Sir Raymond
Miller, Hal (Bromsgrove &amp; Redditch)
Tapsell, Peter


Gray, Hamish
Mills, Iain (Meriden)
Taylor, Robert (Croydon NW)


Greenway, Harry
Mills, Peter (West Devon)
Tebbit, Norman


Griffiths, Eldon (Bury St Edmunds)
Miscampbell, Norman
Temple-Morris, Peter


Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth N)
Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)
Thomas, Rt. Hon. Peter (Hendon S)


Grist, Ian
Monro, Hector
Thompson, Donald


Gummer, John Selwyn
Montgomery, Fergus
Thorne, Neil (Ilford South)


Hamilton, Hon. Archie (Eps'm &amp; Ew'll)
Moore, John
Thornton, George


Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)
Morgan, Geraint
Townend, John (Bridlington)


Hampson, Dr. Keith
Morris, Michael (Northampton, Sth)
Townsend, Cyril D. (Bexleyheath)


Hannam, John
Morrison, Hon. Charles (Devizes)
Trippler, David


Haselhurst, Alan
Morrison, Hon. Peter (City of Chester)
Trotter, Neville


Hastings, Stephen
Murphy, Christopher
van Straubenzee, W. R.


Hawksley, Warren
Myles, David
Vaughan, Dr. Gerard


Hayhoe, Barney
Neale, Gerrard
Viggers, Peter


Heath, Rt. Hon. Edward
Needham, Richard
Waddington, David


Heddle, John
Nelson, Anthony
Waldegrave, Hon. William


Henderson, Barry
Neubert, Michael
Walker-Smith, Rt. Hon. Sir Derek


Heseltine, Rt. Hon. Michael
Normanton, Tom
Wall, Patrick


Hicks, Robert
Nott, Rt. Hon. John
Waller, Gary


Higgins, Terence L.
Onslow, Cranley
Walters, Dennis


Hill, James
Oppenheim, Rt. Hon. Mrs. Sally
Ward, John







Watson, John
Wickenden, Keith
Young, Sir George (Acton)


Wells, John (Maidstone)
Wiggin, Jerry
Younger, Rt. Hon. George


Wells, P. Bowen (Hert'rd &amp; Stev'nage)
Wilkinson, John



Wheeler, John
Williams, Delwyn (Montgomery)
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Whitelaw, Rt. Hon. William
Winterton, Nicholas
Mr. Tony Newton and


Whitney, Raymond
Wolfson, Mark
Mr. John Wakeham.

Question accordingly negatived.

Orders of the Day — CHESHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL BILL [Lords] (By Order)

7.14 p.m.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Richard Crawshaw): I have to inform the House that Mr. Speaker has not selected the motion
That the Bill be read a Second time upon this day six months
standing in the names of the hon. Member for Stockport, North (Mr. Bennett) and others but he has selected the second motion standing in the names of the hon. Member and others:
That it he an instruction to the Committee on the Bill to leave out clause 29.
The third, fourth and fifth motions are not subject to Mr. Speaker's selection and will be called if time permits, but they cannot be entered upon after 10 o'clock.
As there will be only a limited amount of time after 10 o'clock in which to discuss the Instruction, it may be for the convenience of the House if the Second Reading debate and that on the motion for an Instruction are taken together. If that is the wish of the House, it will be done. There will, of course, be an opportunity for the hon. Member for Stockport, North formally to move his Instruction and have it divided upon if the Bill receives a Second Reading.

Order for Second Reading read.

Mr. J. W. Rooker: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I do not want to delay the House, but I wish to raise the question of the position of the petitioners should the Instruction to remove clause 29 be approved.
If the House agrees to that Instruction, when the Bill reaches Committee it will no longer contain clause 29 and there will therefore be no need to petition against it. However, it will be open to any hon. Member, when the Bill comes back on Report, to retable clause 29 on the Amendment Paper, with a motion for its reinstatement in the Bill. That situation arose on the Second Reading of the West Midlands Bill, when the House agreed to the removal of a similar clause.
As a result, that clause was not considered in Committee and the petitioners,

who had lodged objections to it, were not able to pursue the matter further because the House had removed the clause on Second Reading. However, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Mrs. Knight) has tabled that clause for reinstatement in the West Midlands Bill on Report. It means that the petitioners who originally lodged objections, at some expense, operating under the rules of the Standing Orders on Private Business, will have no opportunity to petition the House on that clause, even though it will be before the House.
That is the point about the Cheshire County Council Bill. Let us suppose that the House tonight decides to remove clause 29, according to the Instruction on the Order Paper. I have been through the Standing Orders on Private Business—a substantial document—and I have also checked in "Erskine May", albeit briefly, and I cannot find any occasion on which petitioners against a clause in a Private Bill have had their constitutional and democratic rights removed from them, not deliberately, but by a quirk of procedure. Is that in order? If the House were to decide to remove clause 29, in accordance with the Instruction, would that mean the removal of the rights of those who have petitioned against the clause?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I do not think that I can fault the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker) on his argument, but it is always in the power of the House to put something back in a Bill when it is reported to the House. While the hon. Gentleman's point of order is interesting, it is not for me on this occasion, because these are the mechanics of Parliament.

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Standing Orders for Private Business are, apparently, designed to protect petitioners who have no rights themselves to speak in the House. It appears, however, that if clause 29 is removed tonight, in accordance with the Instruction standing in my name and that of other hon. Members, we shall prevent the petitioners in this case from petitioning. As they wish to petition against clause 29 they will have no objection to its removal, but if an hon. Member can move the reinstatement of the clause on


Report the effect will be that the petitioners will be denied their right to petition against the clause.
There is a procedure for the recommittal of Bills. Perhaps we may have some guidance from the Chair on whether it is correct that if an hon. Member tries to reinstate on Report a provision which has been removed earlier by an Instruction of the House, the Bill must be recommitted so that those who are opposed to the provision can petition against it, as they would have done in the first place had it not been removed on Second Reading.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: We are considering a particular Bill, and the submission of the hon. Gentleman is hypothetical in respect of that Bill. If the clause is not removed tonight, that situation will not arise.

Mr. Bennett: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I have a problem. You have agreed that my Instruction to take out clause 29 can be debated. If I push the matter to a vote and I am successful in having the clause removed, it would appear that those who are opposed to it will be denied the right to petition against it. If the clause remains out of the Bill, I am sure they will be pleased. If, however, an attempt is made to reintroduce the clause on Report, the right to petition is lost.
A safeguard exists in the proceedings of the House generally that no hon. Member can restore a clause which the House has taken out. It has to be reintroduced in some alternative form. I believe that with Government Bills it is possible for the Government to put a clause back in a Bill. What safeguards exist for those petitioners to ensure that if something is taken out on Second Reading it cannot be put back in identical form on Report, so preventing them from having their petition, on which they have spent money, brought forward through the private business of the House?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I repeat that these are hypothetical questions, which do not arise now. The hon. Gentleman asked the Chair whether he should vote for or against. That is not a matter for the Chair. The hon. Gentleman knows the legal implications of what he is doing. It is for him to make up his mind.

7.22 p.m.

Mr. Alastair Goodlad: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
The Bill is promoted by the Cheshire County Council in consultation with the eight district councils in this non-metropolitan county, namely, the borough councils of Warrington, Halton, Ellesmere Port, Vale Royal, Macclesfield, Crewe and Congleton and Chester city council. The purpose of the Bill is to achieve for Cheshire the rationalisation of local legislation which is desired of all local authorities following the enactment of the Local Government Act 1972. Section 262 of that Act provided for the interim continuance in every local government area of the local legislation applicable to the old local authority until, in the case of shire counties, the end of 1984, the metropolitan counties' local legislation being intended to expire at the end of 1979. For Cheshire, this involved the detailed examination of over 150 local Acts and orders.
Section 262 of the Local Government Act 1972 defines clearly the local legislation to which it is to apply and which will be repealed. Generally speaking, it applies to all forms of local legislation promoted by a local authority, the exceptions extending to special law relevant to particular kinds of undertakings including harbours, markets and public utilities.
The scheme of review for local legislation commended to local authorities by the then Government and subsequently by the Department of the Environment has been subjected to detailed scrutiny between the passing of the Act of 1972 and the prospective repeal effected by section 262 of that Act of all local law even beyond the confines of what is actually repealed by the section. It was then expected that before the repeal took effect each county council, in consultation with the district councils for the area, should ensure the promotion of a Private Bill to preserve such of the existing local enactments as warranted continuance, the promoters being required to demonstrate in the ordinary manner applicable to Private Bills a present need for the powers proposed.
At the same time, the opportunity would be taken to include new powers needed to deal with urgent local problems.


In each of the nine Bills introduced in this context, a small number of fresh powers have therefore been sought. Where Local Act provisions had, since their enactment, been replaced by general legislation, no need for re-enactment could of course be shown. The result of the project, as in the case of every Bill of this kind so far appearing before Parliament, is to remove a substantial amount of dead wood from the local statute book and achieve a major advance in its intelligibility.
At the outset, I pay tribute to the promoters of the Bill, the Cheshire county council, for their patience and industry in bringing this measure before us, given the obstacles that have been placed in their way during the past few months. Apart from those obstacles, it has taken three years of preparatory work, not to mention considerable expense, on the part of Cheshire. It has entailed consultation with the eight district councils, their officers and representatives.
I pay particular tribute to Sir John Boynton, secretary and chief executive of the Cheshire county council, for his work not only on the Bill but for Cheshire as a whole and for local government. It is a matter for sorrow in Cheshire, and I suspect for this House, that he is retiring this year. I also pay tribute to Mr. Kellett for his work on the Bill and to all the officers and members of the staff of the county council, the district councils and those people in Government Departments and outside bodies, such as the trade unions, who have contributed to the thinking which has gone into the making of the Bill.
It is not my intention to go through every clause. My hon. Friend the Member for Wirral (Mr. Hunt) will deal with particular questions about its provisions in winding up the debate.
I should perhaps say that the Bill deals with a number of different matters affecting the functions of the county council as well as of the constituent district councils. Part II relates particularly to employment opportunity. Great importance is attached by the promoters to the powers made available by the Bill. I hope that the necessity for their use will be infrequent and that they will be used sparingly and selectively. With other local autho-

rities in the region having similar powers, it is clearly necessary that Cheshire should have comparable ones.
Clause 29, to which the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker) has referred, is the chief bone of contention before the House. The promoters particularly wish to be permitted to canvass the case for this clause or for that case to be canvassed in Committee in the context of the West Midlands County Council Bill, from which a similar clause was deleted by a motion on Second Reading, and in the context of the County of Merseyside Bill, in which the clause was allowed to proceed following a Division on Second Reading on 13 March 1979.
In the case of the Bill before us, the promoters will seek the leave of the Committee to make amendments consistent with those proposed for Merseyside. In particular, leave will be sought to reduce the period of notice from seven to three days and to add to the exemptions already included in the clause, for processions by charitable organisations, an exemption for processions organised or conducted for the purpose of any funeral by a person acting in the normal course of business as a funeral director, and to provide that proceedings shall not be instituted for any offence under the clause, nor for any attempt, incitement or conspiracy to permit any such offence, unless the proceedings are instituted by or with the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Mr. Eldon Griffiths: Will my hon. Friend explain in more detail the point he makes about funerals? In Northern Ireland, and recently in the London area, a funeral was turned into a political procession. That can happen. I should like to be clear that when my hon. Friend suggests that the promoters will wish to amend clause 29 in respect of funerals he is saying that this relates to funerals that are the normal process of interring people and recognising their end rather than those occasions when a funeral can be, and sometimes is, turned into a major political occasion.

Mr. Goodlad: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this important point. The wording suggested is "the normal course of business as a funeral director". The circumstances in which a funeral is normal or abnormal should


be a matter for consideration in Committee. It may be a matter for close scrutiny or for amendments, or perhaps for amendments of amendments. If my hon. Friend would like to pursue the point further, I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral will take it up when he winds up.

Mr. Rooker: One has to be careful what one says here, but it might help the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Griffiths) to point out that the central issue is who organises the procession. Clearly, in the recent case to which the hon. Gentleman referred, the funeral directors who were doing the business of funeral directing did not in the course of their business organise a procession. Someone else, or some other body, did that. Therefore, I do not think that we should get too concerned about the operations of funeral directors in the sense that they are covered in the Bill and in the sense in which we have discussed them on previous Bills.

Mr. Goodlad: Indeed, the principal argument in favour of clause 29, as in the case of Merseyside, is that a similar provision is now in force in Cheshire under the Cheshire County Council Act 1953 and in certain other local Acts. In practice, the existing local Act provisions have worked well, with the general acceptance of all concerned. It has been found in Cheshire that the existence of the local Act powers has been well understood by the organisers of processions and in Cheshire respected by them.
Where necessary, it has been brought to the organisers' notice, but in general the law has not been applied rigidly and the general attitude of the police is that every endeavour should be made to help organisers of processions, with due regard for the safety of the public in the streets from a road traffic and other points of view and also with due regard for the needs of persons living or working in premises adjoining the streets for peace and security while processions are going on.

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: The hon. Gentleman says that the existing law is working well. He will be aware that the period of notice under that law is only 36 hours. If that has worked well, what is the argument for proposing an increase to seven days and then reducing it to

three days? I thought that the promoters, in their letters, were saying, in effect, "We do not need three days. We put it in simply because that was the common clause." Since all Bills are separate, would it not be better to stick to 36 hours, which has worked so well in Cheshire, get the whole thing through quickly and even save the promoters some money?

Mr. Goodlad: The appropriate period is a matter of opinion. The hon. Gentleman has studied the matter, so he will know that there are 115 separate precedents for this power. A number of different periods of notice are involved, many of them shorter than three days, a few longer.
Given the additional pressures on the police, the need for consideration, for the cancellation of leave and so on, a period of three days is desirable if processions are to be adequately regulated by sufficient police without too much inconvenience to the police and if such processions are to be adequately protected. However, I agree that it is a matter of opinion, and we can debate the matter further in Committee.

Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody: Can the hon. Gentleman tell us of any occasion in the last 10 years when 36 hours has not been found sufficient and great confusion has been caused? When did this riotous assembly take place?

Mr. Goodlad: I hope that the hon. Lady is not suggesting that there is any question of there being a riotous assembly in Cheshire—certainly not in my constituency, or hers, I should have thought. It has been the custom to give a week's notice. There have been street processions which have given rise to unhappy incidents, such as in Ellesmere Port in 1971—

Mrs. Dunwoody: Nine years ago.

Mr. Goodlad: —eight years ago, when a mass of flying pickets took off on a march along a busy arterial road. That led to chaos, brought traffic to a standstill, left many drivers and other members of the public generally confused and, even more important, placed some people in danger. The police found it necessary to make a number of arrests—45, I believe—and I am told that they are of the opinion that had adequate advance warning of the


march been given, the necesary arrangements could have been made, confusion and danger could have been avoided, and no need for arrests would have arisen.

Mrs. Dunwoody: I apologise for interrupting again, but how many processions have been notified to the Cheshire police since 1971?

Mr. Goodlad: I regret to say that I cannot tell the hon. Lady the exact number, but my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral will try to do so.
On the Ellesmere Port occasion, I understand that the assistant chief constable is of the opinion that the procession could have taken place with no unfortunate incident had notice been given in accordance with the statutory powers. Section 3 of the Public Order Act 1936 empowers the chief officer of police to give directions as to the route that the march should take and also requires the chief officer, in a case of serious danger, to request the district council to apply to the Home Secretary for an order banning marches in its area for a limited period. In practice, those powers can be exercised only if the authorities have advance notice of a march. Furthermore, the police cannot arrange for extra men to be on hand to maintain order without such notice, since it takes time to cancel leave and to make arrangements with other police forces to draft men into the area where they are required. As the hon. Lady and others will know, we have seen examples of that in the past few months—although not, I admit, in Cheshire.
The fact that there are 115 precedents since 1910 for provisions to require notice of public processions shows that most local authorities have found the power of major assistance in securing the orderly carrying on of processions in their areas.

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman knows that many in that list apply only to processions which involve live circus animals.

Mr. Goodlad: Indeed, yes.
The provisions of the clause also fall clearly within the intentions of Parliament in enacting section 262 of the Local Government Act 1972 and within the advice of the Department of the Environment that the powers, which are in regular use,

should qualify for re-enactment under Bills such as this.
The important factor for the county council in seeking the powers has been the demands on police manpower. In the case of a major procession it is necessary to make advance arrangements for the cancellation of policemen's rest days, to divert other police from their normal duties and to arrange for the erection of barriers as necessary to close side roads. The exercise also involves a careful husbanding of police service morale. This is naturally disrupted if cancellations of leave and alterations of duties sometimes substantial—have to be arranged without notice.
The powers in the Cheshire County Council Act 1953 have not applied since 1974 to the whole area of the new county and in particular do not extend to the former county boroughs of Chester and Warrington or to that part of the former Lancashire county which has come within the Cheshire boundary. Enactment of clause 29 should therefore regularise the unified treatment of the whole county under this power.
I repeat that there is no intention in the Bill to fetter the freedom that Cheshire has enjoyed for a long time, which it has exercised responsibly and liberally, and which it will continue to exercise responsibly and liberally. I commend the Bill to the House.

7.38 p.m.

Miss Jo Richardson: I want to address myself to clause 29. As Conservative Members will have noticed, a large number of us on this side—I am pleased to see that some new Members have joined us in this exercise—feel strongly about the inclusion in the county council Bills which have been coming forward in the last few months of provisions which strike at the right of people to demonstrate without necessarily being obliged to notify the police in advance—whether 36 hours, three days or seven days. This is a deeply held right in this country, although not written into the law in any constitutional sense.

Mr. Goodlad: I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Lady so early in her speech. Does she acknowledge that the clause does not govern spontaneous demonstrations but is concerned only with organised street processions?

Miss Richardson: The hon. Gentleman does not quite understand the words in the clause. Those who have a spontaneous demonstration could equally be caught by the provisions of this Bill. They are the people we are out to protect. We seek to protect their right to demonstrate in an organised way, but on a spontaneous basis. I do not understand the point the hon. Member is trying to make. What is "organized" and what is "spontaneous"?
We must remember that we are discussing not simply the interests of those who live in Cheshire but those of everyone in this country. If we go on enacting such clauses in Bill after Bill, we shall eventually cover the length and breadth of the United Kingdom and everyone's interests will be injuriously affected. A precedent will be set and we shall never get rid of it.
This country is a signatory of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 20(1) provides that everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association. We are also a signatory of the European Convention on Human Rights, and have ratified article 1(1), which also provides that everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association. Neither of these items has any standing in British law, but our international obligations must surely imply a presumption in favour of freedom of peaceful expression and association. I do not think that we should go against the spirit of those articles.
I have forgotten how many times we have debated this point. In our previous debates there has been reference to the judicial consideration which was given by Lord Scarman to the proposal that it should be an offence to organise a demonstration without prior notice. It is worth repeating that in the report of his inquiry into the Red Lion Square affair Lord Scarman said that he saw no justification for agreeing with this proposal. He said that he saw no reason why it should be accorded merit or written into our law. The former Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Rees), now sitting below the Gangway, in February 1978, when talking about the Public Order Act, said that, although he was having discussions with the police, he could see no reason why, at that stage, there should be a change in

the law. From my investigations of this Bill and my contacts with the people in the area—I have a few—I have learnt that there has been a good deal of local opposition to the inclusion of this clause. The county association of trades councils—which comprises nine local trades councils—has been campaigning against the inclusion of this clause.

Mr. Barry Porter: Perhaps the hon. Lady would like to give details of those organisations or people, other than the local trades councils, who have objected to the clause.

Miss Richardson: The hon. Gentleman is somewhat impatient. I was about to tell him. The North-West region of the TUC, which covers Cheshire—I checked that this afternoon—passed a resolution which was against the introduction of these provisions. I have also been in contact with Friends of The Earth. This organisation has 230 local groups throughout the country. I understand that it has a group in Cheshire. Friends of The Earth, as those who are interested in such matters will appreciate, tends to run local campaigns. It looks out for matters affecting local areas in addition to its national campaigning. It watches out for issues in a locality and action taken upon them is principally the function of the local group. I understand from it that it has good relations with the police and that it does notify the police in advance as a matter of courtesy—as do most organisations. The North-West region of the TUC and the trades council do so.
The fact that such organisations would have to notify the police would take away that element of spontaneity, of thinking up a demonstration and holding it immediately. That would be gone if we allowed clause 29 to be enacted. There could be an issue arising on which it would be difficult or even impossible for the necessary amount of notice to be given to the police. People run away with the idea that organisations do not notify the police. In their own interests they try to do so whenever possible.
Suppose that there were to be another Flixborough—although I hope that there never will be. An organisation such as Friends of The Earth, and doubtless many other people resident locally, would want to demonstrate on such a matter and


would probably want to do so within a matter of minutes or hours of such a disaster. It would not necessarily follow that there would be time for such a demonstration to be notified in advance to the police. We should not place upon people the necessity of having to give such notice.

Mr. Eldon Griffiths: Can the hon. Lady give any example where the police have been so foolish as to react to a spontaneous demonstration carried out peacefully? When, for example, have they used the powers provided in the Merseyside County Council Act in the manner she is suggesting?

Miss Richardson: I do not know when the police have used these powers. If they have not used them, as the hon. Member seems to be implying, why are we discussing this matter? Why have such a provision? If the police will take the attitude that everything will go on as before and no action will be taken—that there will be no fines of £200 imposed—I do not know why the promoters are bothering to include this clause.
It was interesting to read some of the discussions which have been taking place in the United States on this point. I have some links with the American Civil Liberties Union—not very close ones, but I get some information from it. This issue has exercised its mind. I understand that a number of courts in the United States believe that the requirement of notice is unconstitutional in American law. I know that we are discussing not American law, but British law, and in particular Cheshire county council law. It is interesting to note the American experience. I understand that the bulk of it has shown that no requirement of notice is quite the best way genuinely to ensure that there is the right of freedom of speech and assembly. In the United States it is traditional to notify the police as much as possible in advance of any demonstrations which are to be organised. But the requirement to do it is what raises the difficulty. In particular, I understand that the identification requirement has, in the words of one judge in one court in the United States, had
a chilling effect on legitimate assembly.
I think that the House will understand

that where one person or one organisation has to be held responsible and is liable to fine or other sanction, as is proposed in such a clause as this, people can be inhibited from ever having demonstrations at all.
We all want to see people allowed to demonstrate peacefully, where they wish to do so, with no question of disturbing other residents or passers-by on the public highway. Most people, and certainly most organisations, will as a matter of routine get in touch with the police and make proper arrangements. But, surely, we must retain the right of everyone in this country to demonstrate without the legal necessity of having to notify the police in advance and being subject to the sanctions written into the Bill.

7.51 p.m.

Mr. Eldon Griffiths: I wish to speak briefly on this matter, and the House knows my interest as parliamentary adviser to the police service.
I start with a general point. I do not like the way in which we are dealing with this matter piecemeal in a series of local authority Bills. It is a national matter. It would be far better if we could arrive at some sensible agreement in the House, the basis of which the Government themselves could put forward, so that the police, wherever they were, and the local authorities would know exactly what the position was.
I have attended most of these debates, though not all—

Mr. Rooker: Not the West Midlands one.

Mr. Griffiths: I missed the West Midlands one, as the hon. Gentleman never fails to point out. If I had been here, he would not have won the point. But, as I say, I regard it as unsatisfactory that county councils are having to deal with this matter on a piecemeal basis, albeit by standardised clauses, It is a national problem. It should have a national response, and I am sure that that is what both the right hon. Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Rees), who tackled these problems, and my right hon. Friend would prefer.
There is, of course, the special problem of London. I need not go into that,


but it is probably true that the Commissioner in London and the police authority, who is the Home Secretary, must have special powers because of the special nature of London, and it is in all probability unnecessary to extend those quite considerable London powers to the rest of the country. Therefore, whatever we did nationally, we should probably have to make some exception in any event for London. Nevertheless, I think that the time has come to sweep up these matters in some nationally agreed clause. It could perhaps be included in county council Bills, but it ought to be a matter agreed at national level.
My second general point is that I welcome the change from the seven days' notice to three days' notice. I am not exactly sure what the position is here. I do not know whether Merseyside, where the amendment was accepted, now has three-day notification and whether the West Midlands, where it was removed, has no notification period at all or has a seven-day notification period. I am afraid that I do not know the facts in that respect. But what I am clear about is that where there were, for example, two county council areas with different requirements and it was possible for a procession to go from one into the other quite legitimately, that would place both the public and the police in an absurd situation.

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: If the hon. Gentleman looks at the Order Paper he will see that the position on the West Midlands Bill is that it has been reported without any clause on processions in it, but there are amendments down which seek to put in such a clause.

Mr. Griffiths: I think that my point is made. We need to deal with this matter on a national basis, though I welcome the changes which have been so eloquently proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Northwich (Mr. Goodlad). I think that the intervention of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker) on the question of funerals answered my point.
I have three small points to put to the Minister and the promoters. The police in general—I speak of the Police Federation—welcome the clause because they think that it is right that notice should be given where an organised procession

is to go through the streets of any city. It will be within the recent recollection of the House that there have been appalling encounters where one group of people perhaps on the far Left of politics and another group on the far Right have almost deliberately chosen to have processions through the same areas at the same time. The police have found themselves in the middle. People on both sides have been hurt.
That state of affairs is unacceptable for us in this country, and it therefore follows that there must be notification and there must be a chance in advance for the police to agree with the organisers which routes they will use and at which times of day they will process in order to avoid the clashes which none of us wants to see.

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: Will the hon. Gentleman explain the Police Federation's attitude to the counter-procession as opposed to the counter-demonstration? I ask that because of the way in which he is illustrating his point. If one person is given the exclusive right for his procession to go through, because he has given the minimum notice so that no one else can organise a procession on the same day, it means that people stand around on the sidelines and, unfortunately, do what they can to disrupt it. I should have thought—many policemen have expressed this view to me—that it would be preferable if it were arranged for someone else to organise a counter-procession held sufficiently far away so that the two groups did not come to blows.

Mr. Griffiths: That is precisely the point that I was trying to make. The police invariably find themselves in the middle. I say at once that they do not particularly like to protect either the black Fascists of the National Front or the red Fascists of—occasionally—the Anti-Nazi League. They do not like to do that, but in a free society it is their job to do it.
I think that it is a matter about which we can be perfectly sensible. If in any one built-up community there are to be three, four or five processions—let us recognise that in many of our big cities there are often as many as that almost every weekend in the summer—elementary common sense requires that there be some arrangements so that they do not clash.
The hon. Member for Stockport, North (Mr. Bennett) makes the point that people will stand on the sidelines and jeer and occasionally throw stones. It is a simple matter. If they break the law, they must be stopped. If they do not break the law, they are exercising their rights. But the difficulty for the police is that they have to stand between two rights—first, the undoubted right of the citizen to organise, to process and to protest, and, secondly, the other right of the citizen not to be prevented from going about his lawful business in peace, not to have his home and his garden damaged, and so on.
The police must see that both those sets of rights are preserved. They can do that only if they are given reasonable notice of what is to happen. They are told who is organising the procession so that they can deal with him. Very often, if they know the names of the organisers, they will sit down and go to considerable lengths to help the organisers make their procession successful. The police have an interest in seeing that the rights of the citizen are not only protected but are successfully asserted. They seek to do that. But they cannot possibly do it if they do not know who is organising the procession, where it is to go and at what time of day it is to take place.

Mr. Stuart Holland: The hon. Gentleman spoke of the red Fascists of the Anti-Nazi League. Is he implying that all members of the Anti-Nazi League are Fascists, and, if not, will be withdraw that remark?

Mr. Griffiths: Of course, I am implying no such thing. I am talking generally. There are in the National Front black Fascists, and there are, in my view, a number of red Fascists in the Anti-Nazi League. I do not like either of them. I was simply saying that the police have no desire to be thought to be on the side of either. They are only on the side of the law and the balance of the two sets of rights, the right of the hon. Gentleman to protest and my right, if I happen to live in the same neighbourhood, not to be prevented from going about my lawful business in peace. The police have a difficult task. Surely it is reasonable that they should be given notice and the names of organisers so

that they may have a constructive discussion and indication of the times of processions and thus try to avoid clashes.
A few of the hon. Members who talk about these matters seem to think that the police service is anti-freedom. Because the police have to protect those whom those hon. Members think that the police do not like or with whom they disagree, they are on the side of those groups. That is not so. In my view the police are the best guardians of freedom that we have. We should be giving them support and not removing it.
In the end, it is a matter of resources and good will. The police service is overstretched. It does not have enough manpower, and it has insufficient resources If large numbers of police officers are taken away from neighbourhoods to protect protest marchers, organisations and demonstrations, it should be accepted that those who pay the price are citizens who live in the neighbourhoods from which police officers have to be removed to carry out other duties.
It happens all too often, especially in London, that 5,000, 6,000 or 7,000 police officers have to be removed from their duty of protecting the neighbourhoods of London to be present at demonstrations in the centre of the capital. The result is that many citizens find that crime, larceny, hooliganism and vandalism increase in their neighbourhoods. They have to pay the price. The elementary utilisation of police resources means that it is sensible to give the police service, by notice, the opportunity to use its manpower properly.
I hope that the clause will be accepted without too much contention. The time has come when we must have a national clause—with the exception of London—which will bring about standardisation throughout our legislation.

8.3 p.m.

Mr. David Alton: First, I quote from a brief produced by the National Council for Civil Liberties earlier this year, which states:
The National Council for Civil Liberties considers that the proposals, if implemented, would be a serious limitation on the freedom of association and expression. It is disturbing that the law can be amended in such a fundamental way through the introduction of private Bills by local authorities".


That echoes a view that was expressed by Lord Justice Scarman, who after the Red Lion Square inquiry said:
It cannot be said too often that our law assumes that people will be tolerant, self-disciplined and willing to co-operate with the police. The assumption is still sound: that is why the police go unarmed, and also why, with no legal requirement of notice, the police are in fact notified in at least 80 per cent. of the cases. There are some who—law or no law—would never give notice: but they are on the very fringe of our society and should not, I suggest, force upon the law a largely unnecessary requirement, which can at times be an embarrassment to law-abiding citizens.
I have quoted those views because I feel that a back-door method is being used to make major changes within the law. Local Bills are largely innocuous measures dealing with the closing of parks, the parking of caravans, the paving of yards and basically local matters. By using local legislation to make major changes that will affect people's basic rights and freedoms, local authorities are sneaking in measures that the House has not properly debated or aired. In that way the House is being prevented from expressing a proper point of view on national legislative change.
If the House accepts the Bill, any organiser who fails to give the necessary notice and is found guilty of an offence will be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding £200. However, in 80 per cent. of demonstrations the police are notified voluntarily. Major demonstrations of the type that pose a threat to public order need to be publicised if they are to be effective. The police know well in advance that such demonstrations will take place. They have ample warning.
The hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Griffiths) spoke about the thugs and bully boys in the Anti-Nazi League and those on the far Right. There could be people in such groups who will not give notice in any event, law or no law. At present the courts are left to implement the provisions of the Public Order Act 1936. Surely the provisions in that measure should continue to apply. It is a dangerous precedent to sneak through local legislation that will restrict the right of association. The supervising of demonstrations is not like looking after the Chester Walls. Surely the right to demonstrate is the political privilege of every Briton, or it should be.

Mr. Eldon Griffiths: How is the right of the citizen limited if he has to tell the police in advance where he is going so that he does not clash with somebody else?

Mr. Alton: There are spontaneous occasions when there is a wish to demonstrate because, for example, a child has been caused an accident while playing in the road, because a Conservative-controlled authority has introduced massive rate increases, or because there has been an industrial injustice. Advance notice will prevent that type of a spontaneous demonstration. It is significant that the original provision in the Bill was to limit the period of notice to seven days instead of three days.
There are many inconsistencies in the various local Bills that have been introduced. For instance, in Tyne and Wear no notice is required. In the Isle of Wight the requirement is seven days, as it is in Greater Manchester. On Merseyside three days' notice is required. A reduction from seven days to three days is sought in Cheshire.
It is true that there were many anomalies among the old authorities. There was a hotch-potch of legislation. I understood that the reason for the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act was to harmonise and rationalise local legislation. However, we are introducing more inconsistent legislation. From area to area the public will be unaware of the application of the law. It could be caught in different laws in different counties. The application of the law could be different on each side of a river.
Liberals view with great concern the possibility that seven days' notice will be required in most of the country for the holding of street processions. That poses a serious threat to individual political rights. We deplore any breach of public order. However, the seven days' requirement will hit hardest at spontaneous small-scale demonstrations that pose no threat to public peace. The relevant clauses are misguided, however good the original intentions might have been. There are already sufficient limitations on our freedoms and the right of peaceful assembly. We should be especially concerned to stop any further erosion of our civil liberties.
Conservative Members speak a great deal about the need to strike redundant provisions off the statute book. The Bill is promoting more inconsistencies within our legislation and more provisions that will have to be repealed.

8.8 p.m.

Mr. Barry Porter: I support the Bill and the clauses that we have been discussing and I pay tribute to the work that has been done by the county council and its officers, especially to Sir John Boynton, whose going I regret. I pay tribute to the officials of the Ellesmere Port district council, who have done so much work in preparing the Bill.
My constituency is in two areas. Part of it is on Merseyside and the other part, the area that we are discussing, is in Cheshire. The odd situation may be envisaged whereby a procession could be legal in one part of my constituency and illegal in the other on crossing a road. That is nonsense and goes some way to supporting the argument of my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Griffiths) and, as I understand it, of the former Home Secretary—namely, that these matters should be dealt with nationally. I support that view. Nevertheless, it is a Cheshire County Council Bill and that is how we must deal with it.
When I first read the Bill and the Instruction I wondered what it had to do with the rolling plains of Cheshire, as it was difficult to imagine that there would be riotous assembly, danger and trouble in those areas. However, my attention was drawn to what occurred in Ellesmere Port in 1971. Much has been said by hon. Members on both sides, and especially by the Opposition, about the rights of the demonstrators.

Mr. Alton: Will the hon. Gentleman say how many people were arrested as a result of that incident in 1971? What damage was done to property as a result of it? Would it have occurred if there had been this provision in the legislation?

Mr. Porter: That information is not available to me. Presumably the hon. Gentleman knows those figures. I do not. However, the hon. Gentleman's argument

in favour of spontaneity is an argument for possible trouble. I am concerned not only with the rights of demonstrators and processors but with those of the people around whom they process and against whom they demonstrate.

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: At that time was not there a requirement in that part of Ellesmere Port to give at least 24 hours notice? As that provision did not solve the problem then, why would a requirement now solve it?

Mr. Porter: That would be like an argument against the law of murder because some people did not observe the law. The purpose of this legislation is the provision of a safety net.
At least 80 per cent. to 90 per cent. of demonstrators, as a matter of courtesy and practicality, inform the police of their intentions, rightly and properly so. This clause will not apply to the 80 per cent. or 90 per cent. who behave in a reasonable and civilised fashion. It is meant for the 5 per cent. or 10 per cent. who have no intention of behaving in a reasonable and civilised fashion.
Hon. Members may care to consider whether a spontaneous demonstration, about which we are arguing, is desirable. Flixborough was mentioned. Is it of necessity right that, as soon as there is a ghastly occurrence, people should take to the streets to protest, without knowing the circumstances, without considering, without reflecting? That is the way to make a bad decision. It results in people being on the streets when tempers are running high and feelings are extremely heated. That is where danger occurs—not in a demonstration that takes place two or three days later when people have had time to reflect. That does not mean to say that their feelings are any less strong. However, they may well participate in an organised, orderly but nevertheless strong demonstration. I do not understand why the Opposition are so excited about the matter.

Mr. Rooker: I know that the hon. Gentleman represents Bebington and Ellesmere Port. People living around Flixborough for several years might have complained about unsafe practices. This does not apply to Flixborough; this is an example. Something might have happened that they forecast and expressed


concern about, but about which there was no action. When the crisis occurred they would not have discussed the matter for two days and then decided to demonstrate. Of course not. This is the point. This is where the spontaneity is involved.
A spontaneous demonstration may occur in the case of an accident black spot, where accidents have repeatedly occurred in the same place and where people have been repeatedly killed. That is when a demonstration would arise. If there was no problem, there would not be an issue about which to demonstrate. The hon. Gentleman must be realistic.

Mr. Porter: I concede that I am not in the business of going on demonstrations. However, I take the point made by the hon. Gentleman. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds would confirm this. It is highly unlikely that in such circumstances any action would be taken by the police to prosecute.

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: There is a large oil refinery close to the edge of the hon. Gentleman's constituency, if not in it. Let us assume that there was a story in this week's local newspaper that there were unsafe practices there. Would the hon. Gentleman advise his constituents to wait for a week or two before organising a demonstration to demand that the unsafe practices cease? He would not. He would ask for immediate action to be taken. But if he organised a walking protest he would be in breach of the law if he did not wait. The hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Griffiths) disagrees. It is not a good law if it allows the police to choose whether to prosecute or approve or disapprove. There should be a right to demonstrate, ideally, giving the maximum notice to the police. However, sometimes, because of the nature of the urgency, notice cannot be given. Therefore, in those circumstances people should be entitled to demonstrate.

Mr. Porter: May I put the argument another way? There are ways of demonstrating and showing disaffection, anger or other emotion other than by holding a street procession. This clause relates to street processions. If the Opposition cannot think of any other way of indicating their anger or disapproval,

perhaps I may be able to enlighten them elsewhere.
The arguments advanced by the Opposition do not take account of the danger to people who live on the streets where the processions take place. That is what concerns me.
The hon. Member for Barking (Miss Richardson) made no reference to those not involved in demonstrations, who presumably are not interested and do not care. Why cannot the Opposition see that there must be counterbalancing forces? There is the right to demonstrate and assemble. Equally, individuals who do not want to be upset or bothered have a right not to be involved in that assembly. They have the right to pass and repass over their roads. It must be correct for the police to make the appropriate arrangements.
I am sorry to say this. It appears to me that on some occasions at least the Opposition assume—in some degree—that the police are not sympathetic to whatever demonstration is going on. I give my sympathy to the police in the circumstances that arise, especially in the major cities. The circumstances described will largely arise in Cheshire.

Mrs. Dunwoody: This is a Cheshire Bill.

Mr. Porter: I am obliged to the hon. Lady for that information. I was aware of that. Although the Bill refers to Cheshire, it relates to a large number of other places. If not, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker) would not be here. I understand that he, too, was present in the debates on the West Midlands and Merseyside Bills. He treats this as a national matter. If I stray from the clause I do not apologise, as I also treat it as a national matter.
I was interested in the views of the hon. Member for Liverpool, Edge Hill (Mr. Alton), who could think only of demonstrating about Tory-controlled authorities, which is typical of any Liberal contribution to a debate of this kind. The hon. Member talked about political privilege and inconsistencies of notice. Indeed, there are inconsistencies—there always have been, I understand—in local government and local government Bills.


I see no virtue, necessarily, in all local authorities having exactly the same provisions. I have been told that on a previous occasion in another place that was part of Liberal philosophy.
I do not want to detain the House for much longer, except to say that this is a perfectly sensible clause and that sensible, practical people will see no harm in it. The list of people given by the hon. Member for Barking as being opposed to the clause, in my view, can only be seeing principle where none exists. If it is any comfort to the hon. Lady, however, I share her view about launderettes being zero-rated for VAT. Perhaps we might be able to agree on that as a matter of principle in due course.
The Bill has taken some time to get to the present stage. The activities of some, including, perhaps, some Opposition Members, have caused a great deal of trouble and expense and—

Mr. Rooker: The hon. Member for Bebington and Ellesmere Port (Mr. Porter) must not come to this place and criticise any hon. Member, whatever side of the House he or she is on, for operating within the rules of procedure and articulating the problems that constituents have raised. If it causes the hon. Gentleman, his party or anyone outside inconvenience and extra expense, so be it. That happens to be what this place is for—to air such problems. There is nowhere other than the British House of Commons that one can go to raise such issues.
While I am on my feet I should like to ask the hon. Member for Wirral (Mr. Hunt), through the hon. Member for Bebington and Ellesmere Port, one question. He concluded by saying that reasonable people would accept the clause. Does he mean reasonable people such as the promoters of this Bill? For example, if this clause was removed on an Instruction so that it did not go to Committee, and if at some subsequent time during the passage of the Bill, which still has a long way to go, the hon. Member himself tabled the clause again on the Floor of the House, would the promoters of the Bill be prepared to say now that they would agree to the clause being recommitted to the Committee so

that the petitioners, who have spent money and time organising their petition, could have their petition served?
That is part and parcel of my original point of order. I should be grateful if, at some time during the course of the debate, the promoters could give their views on that matter.

Mr. Porter: Obviously I am not in a position to reply to that question. I am quite certain that my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral (Mr. Hunt) has instructions on that point and will deal with it when he winds up.
I believe that it ill behoves the hon. Member for Perry Barr to remonstrate with me for expressing my deeply held views. It is perfectly valid for me to mention the fact that people are causing expense and inconvenience. The hon. Member may think that, in the circumstances, he is justified in causing inconvenience and expense, but I am equally entitled to hold a contrary opinion.

8.22 p.m.

Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody: One of the advantages of having been released from my previous European incantations is that I am able to spend more time taking part in debate on the Bill before us. I have followed previous debates on this subject with great care.
I have the great honour of serving Cheshire county as one of its Members, and I have had the advantage, over a number of years, of learning about the special character of Cheshire men and women. They are unique and have a quality of self-confidence that is sometimes mistaken by people outside the county as an ability to push people around. One aspect of the character of Cheshire people which shows itself when people talk about the removal of liberty and freedom of assembly is that they become angry, and they are wont to make their anger felt—not heatedly, but effectively.
Before the House lightly passes a clause such as the one in the Bill referring to the freedom of assembly, it should realise exactly what it is doing. The hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Griffiths) said that this was a reasonable requirement and there was not reason why we should oppose it. I agree with him wholeheartedly when


he said that the way to bring about a change in the Public Order Act is not to use a tiny clause slipped in among the dustbins of the Crewe corporation. That is an unwise precedent to set.
There is one other thing that we should guard against, and that is people who come to this House and say unreasonable things in very reasonable tones. The law of assembly has been fought for by this Parliament over many centuries. It is not something that has been acquired lightly. It can be chipped away, limited and changed.
Many centuries ago a gentleman called de Tocqueville set out his analysis of why British democracy worked. If there is one thing that we can see from our European colleagues not 10,000 miles away, it is that we are extremely blessed in having a politically stable society. I do not know how long it will last, but we in Britain benefit from a system which allows people to express their anger in a parliamentary and democratic fashion and in normal spontaneous street demonstrations.
It is important that we should realise that the Bill is the wrong way in which to bring about this change. But I realise that it is also intended to set a precedent for other areas.
As a small child I took part in many demonstrations in the East End of London and, with both of my parents, I saw what it was like when people chose to bomb someone with soot and flour as he passed by their headquarters. These were people who were not themselves demonstrating against others. They were people who stood on the roof of the Fascist headquarters in the East End of London and threw things at those who were democratically demonstrating in the street below.
I have considerable reservations about the arguments that the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds has been putting forward this evening. I do not believe that his suggestions will necessarily solve the problem of those who want to use the democratic processes to achieve power in order to subvert it for their own ends. When we contemplate any change in the law, it is essential that we are aware that there will always be people who will use existing powers for ends other than those for which this House has agreed them.
I am not entirely without fault in this matter. As a tiny cog in a large machine I have stood at that Box and said "Of course you are wrong. You are misinterpreting what this law says. It does not really mean what you think it says. It simply means something extraordinarily limited." The House has a responsibility to pass precise laws which mean what they say and not what we think others will interpret them as meaning.
The Cheshire county police, on the whole, are a fairly sensible body of men. I do not have any real argument with them. I find them to be well aware of the problems of policing a county which contains so many mixed elements. The Cheshire police are loth to do anything that would in any way exacerbate any kind of differences between one group and another. However, it is not always easy for even experienced police officers to take decisions that will have a political impact.
I should like to relate a particular instance. A group of students in my constituency decided that they wished to picket a certain well-known educational establishment. It was rather an effete, middle-class picket, because the students took their chairs on to the grass by the doorway in order to sit there. Nevertheless, it was an occasion of extraordinary calm and considerable discipline—until, because a junior Minister happened to be visiting the establishment on that day, the local superintendent of police, with the best will in the world, appeared with a bus load of uniformed policemen.
Those police officers were not required. They had not been requested. There was no obvious explanation for their arrival—except, perhaps, the desire to be over-careful. But the result was very interesting. What had been an astonishingly boring and rather timid demonstration showed distinct signs of stepping itself up into a minor riot. It was only because of considerable efforts by some of the staff and the fact that it was pointed out that this was just an extraneous arrangement that the students were convinced that great actions were not being taken against them and that the police had not been requested by anyone concerned in the establishment.
No one could say that that superintendent was wrong. He was simply interpreting what he thought might happen. This little clause says, in effect, that the power of decision and interpretation will rest with the police force. The demonstration may be against the local authority, a particular kind of industry or even another trade union—all sorts of disputes arise in the streets—but if people suddenly become exceedingly angry they need to work off that anger in a disciplined way. They need to be able to demonstrate openly to others what they feel. It is the spontaneous quality of that combustion that makes it important that it should evaporate in a way to cause the least damage. With the best will in the world, a police officer with powers of this kind and faced with that situation could take the wrong decision.

Mr. Eldon Griffiths: The hon. Lady is making a perfectly valid point, but on a different subject. Nothing in the clause gives the police the ability to do anything but discuss with the organisers of the procession the route and time that they choose to move.

Mrs. Dunwoody: The hon. Gentleman is mildly naive if he feels that those things in themselves will not have a political impact. They will have a considerable impact on the sort of demonstration that takes place. If these changes are to occur, they must be undertaken in the context of a much larger Act, where they can be openly discussed.
Certainly in Cheshire it cannot be demonstrated that there is need for these extra powers. There was no real problem with a limited power of notification. If the police cannot demonstrate that even in the past eight years there has been a need for extra powers, why are they being included? It is being said that the need for these powers cannot be demonstrated but they might be needed in the future. There is no genuine evidence that they are needed.
It is a diminution of civil liberties to change and limit the ability of ordinary people to demonstrate their feelings.

Mr. Eldon Griffiths: Whatever view the hon. Lady takes, she must recognise that over the past few years, as in the 1930s, there have been occasions when

groups of highly motivated people from one side of the political spectrum have clashed in the streets with people from the other side. That happens in a racial, industrial and ideological context. In those circumstances, it is elementary to public order, and therefore freedom, to arrange for both sides to process and demonstrate in a way that will avoid clashes and injury to large numbers of people, as has happened in Southall and other parts of our country.

Mrs. Dunwoody: That argument will not do if one is seeking changes in particular areas. If there was evidence that such changes in public order were needed, the measure would have to come before the House and be debated openly. The police, trade unions and other voluntary organisations would have to be allowed to give evidence. That is not happening. In the legislation on caravans in front gardens, there is a change in the law to limit people's actions in a positive manner.
It has been implied that the TUC in the North-West does not need to be treated seriously. I assure hon. Members that in Cheshire if we believe our rights are being attacked we respond. It is precisely because there is no evidence whatsoever to show that Cheshire needs a change in the Public Order Act that Cheshire MPs feel that it is necessary for them to take part in the discussion on this Bill.
I have discussed this Bill with the Cheshire county council. We were able to reach agreement. One of the things that saddens me is that we have had to go on as long as we have with this Bill, when it is obvious that hon. Members have considerable misgivings after the discussion that took place on the West Midlands County Council Bill. I would have hoped that there could be a greater and more flexible response, and not simply that we arrive at this point in the discussion, only to find the Cheshire county council saying that it is prepared to withdraw the original period of notification and halve it. If it can be halved as lightly as that, why did it have to be increased at all? Not one hon. Member from Cheshire, or anywhere else, has demonstrated that we need it. All they can say is that it is possible that there might be some future occasion when it


would give some extra support to the police if it allowed them to rearrange routes.
That argument might have some effect in areas where the police forces are badly overstretched. The interesting thing about the Cheshire county council is that for almost all the time its police force is up to strength. This proves that, short of an extraordinary explosition of ill will—which we hope we shall never see in Cheshire—they are able to cope with the political changes that take place. Therefore, I cannot see that there is any argument for this clause. It is not needed.

Mr. David Hunt: Presumably the hon. Lady has had some discussions with the police about this clause before speaking about it in the House. Is she aware that in her constituency there is at present a provision for notice? In almost all cases where notice is given, it is usually at least one week's notice. In this clause the notice is only three days. Does she not, therefore, recognise that the promoters are merely exercising their right to reproduce the existing situation and at the same time halve the normal period of notice?

Mrs. Dunwoody: The one thing that I enjoy in my constituency is its enormous stability. We do not have violent demonstrations. Until recently we have not had any Conservative-controlled authorities of the kind that one hon. Member spoke of tonight. Perhaps I should not be too sanguine and say that at some point in the future there will not be some enormous demonstration against the existing authorities. I cannot say that we always approve of everything that the county council does, but the fact is that we have not had the violence in the streets that seems to demand the enshrining in a Bill of this unnecessary provision.
Over the years in this House people have sought to say that they are not seeking to limit the honest rights of reasonable men, only the right of unreasonable men. The older I get, the more I believe that everybody's definition of "unreasonable" is different. I may believe that the man who has been pushed beyond the point where he can cope with homelessness or domestic difficulties, and who breaks a window in the local authority's offices, has been pushed to a great extent

by forces outside himself. I do not excuse him, but I do not believe that he is acting altogether unreasonably.

Mr. John Evans: Does my hon. Friend accept that this clause, which we are told deals with the attitude of reasonable men, will mean that unreasonable men will not obey its provisions? The unreasonable men—the extremists of Right or Left—will not give notice to anybody because they will be only too happy to take to the streets and have the punch-ups that allegedly they were looking for in the first place.

Mrs. Dunwoody: One of the hazards of this type of change is precisely that outlined by my hon. Friend. He and I have one thing in common, namely, that we spend a great deal of our time with our constituents dealing with the problems of their industrial and domestic lives. We know that the one thing that one must never do to any Cheshire man is to limit his sphere of activity. He takes unkindly to it—so unkindly that one may produce the very response that one is seeking to limit. There is no evidence that one can bring to show that this change is in the interests of my constituents, or anybody else in the county of Cheshire.
I wish that this clause had been withdrawn before the Bill was brought on to the Floor of the House. I can only hope that good sense will now prevail.

8.43 p.m.

Mr. Ian Mikardo: I shall later take up the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe (Mrs. Dunwoody) and others in directing attention to some of the difficulties that arise from clause 29 and some of the disturbing features of that provision.
Before I do so, I wish to deal with the three motions in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport, North (Mr. Bennett) seeking the committal of clauses 6, 7 and 8 to a Committee of the whole House. Those clauses empower the county council to give three different forms of assistance to industry. However, as I read the clauses, the assistance could go to organisations engaged in other commercial occupations than industry.
I regard it as a proper use of the finances and assets of a local authority to give aid of this sort. My own local authority gives such aid, and I am very


much involved locally in a voluntary organisation which helps the authority to do so. I have nothing against the objectives which the county council seeks in these three clauses. However, I believe that the county council has not thought through the detailed problems which can arise from the implementation of these clauses. They require examination to ensure that they will implement the intention behind them.
The subject of aid to industry, whether from central or local government, is complicated. The setting of criteria in determining the proper recipients of aid and the amount and forms of aid are no light task. Let me quote one example of why I feel that the county council has not thought the matter through. Clause 6 empowers a local authority to make loans for industrial purposes to small firms, and "small firm" is defined as
an industrial undertaking which has no more than 100 wholetime employees.
That is an impractical definition which avoids altogether the complications that arise when industries which are labour-intensive and those which are capital-intensive are considered. There are large, prosperous, hugely wealthy and highly profitable firms which have a great deal fewer than 100 employees in highly capital-intensive businesses. One company that is part of a group organisation can perform a specialist function that is concentrated in a relatively small unit. That company may carry out those functions for the benefit of other larger elements in the unit. There may be a tremendous turnover with a relatively small number of employees.
The number of employees is no criterion of whether a firm is small. It may not even be small in a physical sense. There are whacking great power stations covering acres of land with only 30 employees. In the days of the silicon chip, that will become more and more the case. A firm is not necessarily physically small or commercially or industrially small because it has fewer than 100 employees. Other definitions have been made which are equally fallible, but if a definition is to be sought the various yardsticks must be considered—number of employees, turnover, profitability and capital investment. Alternatively, a formula which represents a combination of two or more

of those criteria could be considered. It is a complex and sophisticated matter.
I am sure that officers of county councils run those councils well. However, they do not know much about industry, or this highly oversimplified, unsophisticated and inadequate clause would not have been written into the Bill. That is why the Bill needs examination. The best way to do that is for the House to accept the three motions to commit those three clauses to a Committee of the whole House.
I turn to the only subject raised so far in the debate—clause 29. A small point arises from an intervention by the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Griffiths). The hon. Member for Northwich (Mr. Goodlad) told us that the sponsors were proposing to include a provision to exempt from clause 29 a funeral procession and to exempt from obligation or potential blame under the clause a professional funeral director carrying out his job in the ordinary course of his business.
The hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds said that sometimes in Northern Ireland there were funeral processions with a political content. Is he asking the sponsors to include a clause exempting from obligation a funeral director organising a funeral procession unless that procession has a political content? A definition clause five pages long would then be needed. How is "political content" defined? As he often is, the hon. Gentleman was wrong. Occasionally the hon. Gentleman's enthusiasm to serve the Police Federation faithfully and give it good value for the money that it pays him runs away with his judgment.
The hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds got it absolutely wrong He spoke of the organisers of a procession being the political chaps—such as the IRA in Northern Ireland In fact, the man who is to be exonerated from the need to give notice is the professional funeral director. The poor old professional director cannot be held responsible for people who join in a funeral procession that he has organised, and he certainly cannot be held responsible for speeches made at the graveside The hon. Gentleman was talking nonsense.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: I did not understand what was being said


about funerals, but in an earlier debate it was pointed out that when there was a problem in the Midlands over the funeral of an IRA man, which would have led to trouble in the streets, my predecessor as Home Secretary used the Public Order Act to prevent the march. It is hardly possible to have a funeral without giving notice. There has been confusion about this aspect, and I am still not clear what is afoot in the Bill.

Mr. Mikardo: I am obliged to my right hon. Friend. What was said in the previous debate applies with equal validity to this Bill.
Death is something of which we do not always get notice. If the sponsors could arrange that we always got notice of when we would kick the bucket, we could go to a funeral director a couple of weeks before and ask him "Will you tell the chief constable of Cheshire that I am going to be buried next Tuesday morning?" We do not always know and we cannot always give notice.
I remind the House that it is the practice of adherents of some religions to bury their dead as quickly as possible—sometimes on the day of death and certainly by the day after. They would be violating the principles of their religion if they had to give notice. That is why it is sensible that the sponsors should include the exemption. I am sure that they will not be so daft as to do what the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds asks and exempt from the exemption for funeral directors any director of a funeral with a political content.
The hon. Member for Northwich said more than once that the arrangements in Cheshire had always worked well. He and the county council have every right to be pleased about that, but the hon. Gentleman did not answer the question why, if the arrangements had worked well, the county council was seeking a change. Of all the aphorisms that men use, the wisest is surely that one should leave well alone. Why is the county council not leaving well alone?
The question of spontaneous demonstrations is a serious matter, and I invite the House to give it more serious and detailed consideration. Of course, we are not talking about the generality of processions. Most are fixed well in advance. I used to go on a long weekend

procession every Easter. One good thing about Easter is that although it does not fall on the same day every year, we know the date well in advance each year. So there was no difficulty about giving substantial notice to the various police authorities of the areas through which that long march took place.
Again, the one good thing about May Day is that we know, at least to within a few days, when it will be, so that if any trades council wants to organise a march that day it has no difficulty in giving notice, and the trades councils always give notice. I have taken part in different parts of the country. I have never been on one in which there was the least difficulty, and I am happy to say that I have never been on one which did not receive the best and most friendly co-operation and assistance from the police. I believe that there are some people who organise marches on St. George's Day. They know in advance when that is and they can give notice.
But, as everyone in the House recognises, there are such things as spontaneous demonstrations. I caught my breath when I heard the hon. Member for Northwich say that spontaneous demonstrations were not covered by clause 29 and that they were all right. I am sure that he has been briefed to the contrary since then. If he will put down an amendment to the clause stating specifically that it does not apply to spontaneous demonstrations, and that no penalty arises for no notice being given of those spontaneous demonstrations, those of us who are at present causing him a headache will, instead call down blessings upon him and troop enthusiastically into the Lobby to vote for the Bill.

Mr. David Hunt: I am so grateful to the hon. Gentleman that I rush quickly to my feet in the hope that I might get him in the right Lobby. The definition of "spontaneous" in the Oxford English Dictionary is that which is not organised. Clause 29 applies to processions which are organised. Will he not now reconsider what he has just said?

Mr. Mikardo: If it were as simple as that, it would be very simple indeed. I just want the thing spelt out, and I think that we would have to have an amendment in the clause to make it clear. I repeat that if what the hon. Gentleman


has said is the interpretation that the sponsors of the Bill put upon this provision, and they will spell it out in the Bill, all this argument falls to the ground. The fact that the argument has to go on is in itself evidence that the position is not quite as simple as the hon. Gentleman puts it.

Mr. Dennis Skinner: I agree that the question of spontaneous demonstrations needs clearing up. My hon. Friend will recall that in 1972 the miners were engaged in a long battle with the then Tory Government to get a better wage deal. The Wilberforce committee was set up on a Friday. It deliberated and came to some conclusions. The then Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Sidcup (Mr. Heath), decided that the dispute needed to be settled, quite dramatically, because of the loss of coal over a seven-week period.
The result was that the miners' leaders left 10 Downing Street in the early hours of the Saturday morning, catching a train to Nottingham. They had no time to organise a demonstration, of course, but they went with the blessing of the then Prime Minister to try to get a spontaneous demonstration going in the streets of Mansfield and Chesterfield because the Tory Government were anxious that Lawrence Daly and the others should be seen to be recommending the new deal hammered out at 10 Downing Street.
Therefore, in Mansfield, at 10 o'clock in the morning, with no time to do the thing under the premise of this Bill if it had applied at that time, but with the co-operation of the Tory Government, who wanted a ballot very quickly in order to get the miners back to work, Lawrence Daly and I and many others marched through the streets.
So encouraged was the Establishment to see that we were actually trying to get the message over to the miners—well, I was not, but some were—with a view to getting them back to work under that wonderful settlement that it asked us to go to Chesterfield and do a similar demonstration in north Derbyshire. I was not very happy about that—it was my territory.
That is an example, notwithstanding what we have heard, of the Tory Gov-

ernment at that time actually willing a spontaneous demonstration. They did not want anyone to stand in the way of Lawrence Daly or Mick McGahey. They wanted them to march through the streets. They wanted the miners to get together to reach a settlement and return to work so that the power stations and the country could get back to work. That was a spontaneous demonstration. What would have happened under the Bill we are discussing tonight?

Mr. Mikardo: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. The whole House is always indebted to him for his special insight into the industrial history of Great Britain. We profit a great deal from the information he gives and the education he provides for us. His remarks lead neatly to the next point I wish to make. Even if the sponsors wanted to respond to my invitation to amend clause 29 to exclude spontaneous demonstrations, they would have an awful job defining "spontaneous".
It is terribly difficult. I appreciate that the hon. Member for Wirral (Mr. Hunt) intervened with the best of intentions. One cannot say that "spontaneous" is anything that is not organised. The example given by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) was an example of a spontaneous demonstration organised by a Conservative Government. It is not so simple as the hon. Member for Wirral says. There would have to be some definition. This is not theoretical.
I want to draw attention to types of spontaneous demonstration that have taken place and do take place. If the hon. Member for Bebington and Ellesmere Port (Mr. Porter) believes that it is enough to wag his finger and say to a bunch of rightly angry people "Don't demonstrate. Wait a couple of days until you have cooled off", he only demonstrates that his knowledge of human nature is as incomplete as is apparently his knowledge of the history of his own constituency.
I should like to give some examples. My hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Miss Richardson) mentioned Flixborough. A close example occurs to me. People who live in the vicinity of nuclear power stations and nuclear installations are always worried about the possibility of radiation leaks, as would any of us


living in that environment and those circumstances. While we are in the middle of our worries and being reassured by the authorities three times a day after meals that there is no need to worry and that everything is safe, there is one day a bump. There is a Harrisburg bump, and the thing goes wrong. People will then and there march to the nuclear station and demand some protection, or they will rush to the responsible Minister. They will do something about it. They will not wait until they have cooled off. People do not act in that way.
There have been similar demonstrations by people on the announcement of the route for a motorway which runs through the area where they live and where the things about which they care will be destroyed. What do we do when they get angry? We send for the hon. Member for Bebington and Ellesmere Port, who will come and say "No, no. Quiet, please."
I know of a case where the mothers of children going to a certain school demanded a pedestrian crossing outside the school because half the children crossed a busy road in order to get to it. They nagged for a pedestrian crossing and were turned down. Then an eight-year-old girl was killed while crossing to school, and all the mums took to the street. If the hon. Member for Bebington and Ellesmere Port had wagged his finger at them and lectured them on the foolishness of their behaviour about taking to the street in anger, there would shortly have been a by-election in Bebington.
I will mention another example, which I quoted in the debate on a similar Bill. An industrial tribunal has given an expensive judgment in the last week against a company which dismissed many of its workers at five minutes' notice. When workers are told at five minutes to four on Friday afternoon "Your job ends at four o'clock, so don't come in on Monday," and the head office of the plant is three-quarters of a mile away, they march there to see the boss. Some underling has told them that their livelihood has been destroyed at five minutes' notice and they want to see somebody bigger than the underling.
I give one last and sad example. Unhappily, in the last couple of years, there have been a number of murders in East London, which prima facie seem to be

racial. When a member of a community has been killed on the street in broad daylight and in cold blood, apparently because of racial hatred, how can one say to those people "Don't be angry, don't march to the local police station and demand action"?
The hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds said that the police were very understanding, that they never proceeded against people demonstrating spontaneously in that way. In that case, why do they want the powers to proceed? If they have never proceeded and have no intention of doing so, why do they need them?
As the Bill stands, the police will be able to proceed against and secure punishment of people engaged in such spontaneous protests. I would ask the hon. Member, if he were here, why the police are asking for these powers if they do not exercise them and do not want to. After all, it is they, not Cheshire county council, who are asking for the powers.
This is sinister. If the police said that they wanted the powers because they wanted to exercise them, I should not like that, but I should understand it. But when they say that they want them even though they will not exercise them, I ask myself whether it is because they want to proceed against A and not against B or vice versa. If so, by what criteria will they choose?
Friends of The Earth might have a spontaneous demonstration, as my hon. Friend the Member for Barking described. The local police chief might think that they were a bunch of nutters who should be dissuaded. There might be a spontaneous demonstration about a redundancy. The police chief there might be a fan of Friends of The Earth and an environmentalist himself but against trade unions—or, at least, against all unions but his own. He might decide not to proceed against them. This is too great a power to be put into arbitrary use by people who are not directly accountable for its use and upon whom there will be no check when it comes to the criteria they use in deciding whether to exercise it.
The clause is riddled with difficulties. It seeks to make but a little change. It cannot be said to be a huge change now that the county council has climbed down from the stipulation about seven days. If the county council thought that it


needed seven days, it ought not to be climbing down. It should have the courage of its convictions. It ought now to be asking whether there is any point in arousing all this controversy and prejudicing the possibility of getting the other beneficial provisions of the Bill enacted as quickly as possible for the sake of this small item. That is why I strongly support the motion to instruct the Committee to leave out clause 29 and, for the reasons I gave earlier, the motions to commit clauses 6, 7 and 8 to a Committee of the whole House.

9.12 p.m.

Mr. Allan Roberts: I want to speak to clause 29 in the hope that the sponsors of the Bill will agree to withdraw the clause. I am amazed by what I have heard from Tory Members. It seems that they want organised demonstrations which are not spontaneous. They want spontaneous demonstrations which are not organised. They do not want spontaneous demonstrations which are organised, which would seem to be far more sensible in terms of maintaining law and order than spontaneous demonstrations which are not organised. Next they will be saying that they want spontaneous demonstrations with seven days' notice. The sponsors of the Bill have not thought out what clause 29 means.
Conservative Members believe that the clause allows for spontaneous demonstration when it obviously does not. I suggest that they read the clause carefully and recognise that it will take away the freedom of people to demonstrate spontaneously, in a way that they have been able to do in this country for many years. This is a basic freedom which should not be lightly thrown away—in Cheshire or anywhere else.
It is also being said that the police will not use the clause. My hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Mr. Mikardo) has said that this is sinister and I agree. One of the reasons why the police have not used such a power in the past in places where such a provision has been in force is that it is unenforceable.
It is not possible to enact a law to prevent people from demonstrating spontaneously in certain circumstances. One of the tests of good legislation is whether

it is enforceable. This legislation is not enforceable unless there are to be major conflicts between the police and those who seek to exercise a democratic right to demonstrate peacefully because they feel angry or concerned about something and wish to demonstrate that at short notice. The clause will not work, and that is why in the past the police have on many occasions been reluctant to use such a power.
I am sorry that the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Griffiths) is not present now, because I have a question to put. I am concerned about the question to whom we would be giving the power if the clause were enacted. It would not be so bad if, when we passed legislation giving power to police forces, we gave the power to the police authority rather than to the chief constable, to the people democratically elected in the area rather than to the executive, to those who have to carry out what is required.
I am concerned that we are constantly being asked to give more power to chief constables to take decisions which ought to be taken by the people democratically elected either to this place or to local authorities. It is difficult at present, with the way that our police forces are organised and power is vested in chief constables instead of in police authorities, to get any democratic discussion about decisions taken, for example, to ban marches or to prosecute people who break provisions such as clause 29. It is difficult to have proper discussion in democratically elected bodies such as police authorities.
The hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds said that the police were the best guardians of freedom that we had. I wonder whether he really believes that. It is certainly not true in a lot of countries that the police are the best guardians of freedom. One of the reasons why in many other countries the police are the ones who interfere with people's freedoms—the term "Police State" is familiar to us all—is that more and more power is given to the police and is taken away from democratic institutions such as local authorities, police authorities and Parliament.
If we continue to take away basic freedoms, allowing decisions about whether people should march, about whether a


march is spontaneous or about whether people taking part in a spontaneous march should be prosecuted, and if we vest those decisions in chief constables and the police forces, we shall find that the police are not the best guardians of freedom. Quite the opposite will be true. I am sure that the police themselves do not want it, but they will come to be seen as the people who restrict freedom, who are seen to be controlling citizens' democratic rights in a way which must be totally unacceptable.
It should be remembered that there is a strange aspect to this matter in another respect. In metropolitan counties and non-metropolitan counties, the police authority is the county. It is a county council function exercised through the committee of the police authority. What little power there is to debate and control police matters vests in that authority. But under the Public Order Act the local authority that is consulted about whether a march should be banned is the district authority, and the existence of this situation creates great problems.
I was a councillor in Manchester in 1977 when the local authority, which has a right to be consulted by the police about whether marches should be banned, was totally ignored by the chief constable of Greater Manchester, who then, in his words, connived with the National Front, which planned the route of a National Front march through the most sensitive areas of Manchester, where the immigrant communities live. He did that without consulting the district authority, allowing the National Front to trespass on land owned by the then city of Manchester, again without consulting the local authority.
The hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds said that one of the problems about these marches was that the police were taken away from other duties which were of importance. Literally thousands of policemen were guarding that march, protecting the National Front, a march which was planned by the police. It cost the ratepayers of the city of Manchester and Greater Manchester thousands and thousands of pounds, but they were not even consulted. Such a thing could do nothing but harm to the image of the police, and in that situation they are seen to be not the best guardians of freedom but quite the opposite.
I believe that one reason why we have clause 29 in this form in the Bill is the same as the reason why it was in the Merseyside Bill and is in the Greater Manchester Bill. It is there—this is sinister, too—because chief constables are getting together. They are deciding what local authorities should put in their legislation. They are beginning to influence legislation in a way that is totally unacceptable. That is not their job, and they should be kept well away from legislation.
I represent Bootle, which had its own police force before local government reorganisation. The chief constable was a local man who grew up in Bootle and married the local sergeant's daughter. Everybody knew him. Before the reorganisation there were many chief constables. Now the whole of urban Britain is controlled by six police forces and the Metropolitan police in London. There are six men with a great deal of power outside London. They are policemen who meet together to decide policy. Seemingly they are accountable to no one. They are not accountable to Parliament, the Home Secretary, or even their police authority on such matters. Some of the chief constables, including the chief constable of Manchester, Mr. Anderton, have made political speeches, become cult figures of the Right, and attacked our democratic freedoms and rights.
Clause 29 is part of that campaign. We must vote against it. If Conservative Members really believe in the concept of freedom—and they use that word so often that it is losing its value and changing its meaning—they will vote with my hon. Friends and me against the clause. That will ensure that we take a step towards more freedom, towards maintaining and protecting freedom, and towards stopping chief constables from deciding what the laws should be. The House should decide those laws.
People should have the right to demonstrate when they feel the need to go out into the streets and do so. I cite three examples of spontaneous demonstrations. I was personally involved in two of them. My first political memory is of the Suez crisis, when I took part in a spontaneous demonstration. If the clause had been in force then, that would have been illegal.
Again in my youth I took part in a demonstration about the Cuban crisis.


There were demonstrations then throughout the country that would have been illegal if the clause had been in force.
There was a recent spontaneous demonstration following the execution of Bhutto. If Conservative hon. Members who are fighting for the restoration of the death penalty want to ban the right to demonstrate spontaneously when a decision is taken elsewhere that someone who is under sentence of death by hanging is not to be reprieved, that is an extremely dangerous course to advocate.
Clause 29 is far more significant than at first appears. It is important that it be removed from the Bill or defeated. If the clause is not removed or defeated, it will become a major step towards giving the police far more power than is right, just and sensible if we wish to maintain good relations between the police and the public and the democratic institutions of which we are proud.

9.23 p.m.

The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Leon Brittan): I should like to give the Government's views on some of the matters raised during the debate. I shall comment on the clauses in part II of the Bill that relate to the authority's powers to give assistance to industry.
My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment made clear on Second Reading of the Greater London Council (General Powers) Bill on 12 June that the Government are firmly opposed to any further proliferation of Private Act powers for local authorities to give financial assistance to industry, especially at a time when we are closely examining the Government's powers in that area.
We shall oppose all provisions in local authority Bills now before Parliament that seek to increase existing local powers or to extend their life beyond 1984. For that reason we are opposed to the broadening of the term "industrial", which clause 2 seeks to achieve. We are also opposed to clauses 6, 7 and 9, on the ground that they seek an unacceptable amplification of existing powers. I hope that in its consideration of the Bill the Committee will be persuaded by the arguments put forward opposing those provisions.

Mr. John Evans: The Minister made an important statement. Does he agree

that it would be better for these clauses to be considered on the Floor of the House—in view of the wide ramifications for local authorities which wish to assist industry—rather than in a narrowly defined Committee?

Mr. Brittan: I do not accept that argument.
I should like to proceed to the matters that have occupied the House for the bulk of the time in which consideration has been given to this matter. I refer to the clause requiring those organising or conducting street processions in the county to give advance notice to the police and the district council. The clause is similar to those in a number of other local Bills. Similar provisions in the West Midlands and Merseyside Bills were debated at some length by the previous Parliament.
At present there is no requirement in the Public Order Act 1936 or other national legislation for the organisers of processions to give advance notice of their intention. When, following the Red Lion Square disorders in June 1974, the then Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis proposed such a requirement, Lord Scarman expressed in his inquiry report the view that the need for such a provision had not been established. He had especially in mind the problems that would arise for demonstrations legitimately called at short notice. That matter occupied much of the debate tonight. He also felt that the actions of those who were determined not to co-operate with the police should not cause a legal requirement, which might be inconvenient, to be foisted on the ordinary citizen. It is worth noting that the lack of a notice requirement played no part in causing the disorders into which Lord Scarman inquired.
Moreover, since 1974 there have been further disturbances where lack of notice created substantial problems for the police in the task of preventing disorder and minimising the inconvenience that the ordinary public inevitably suffer as a result of marches.
Serious problems arose at Ladywood in August 1977 on the occasion of an impromptu march connected with a violent demonstration against a National Front by-election meeting. At Digbeth in February 1978 demonstrators against a


National Front meeting decided at the last minute to hold a march along a route that completely nullified a traffic diversion that had previously been arranged and advertised by the police. Hon. Members are well aware of the burdens imposed on the police and the community in the recent general election campaign by often hastily arranged and ill-organised demonstrations.
In the absence of a notice provision, information reaching the police about proposed marches and processions may very well be patchy and arrive too late for appropriate action to be taken to deal with the situation and to make it possible for such marches and processions to take place peacefully in the way that we all want.
It is therefore right that, in relation to the national law, we should consider matters afresh. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary indicated that he intended to consider whether any changes in the law would be useful or desirable.
We heard a great deal tonight about the right to demonstrate, but it is not a right to demonstrate whenever and wherever we want. The exercise of the right of protest must be balanced against the rights of ordinary citizens to go about their business without undue obstruction and inconvenience.
Those hon. Members who referred to the views of Lord Scarman should note he made it clear that he did not consider that a requirement for advance notice represented an unacceptable encroachment on liberty. We heard a great deal about liberty and the right of peaceful assembly from the hon. Member for Barking (Miss Richardson).
Reference was made to international obligations and the need to protect the right of freedom of expression and freedom of speech. I yield to no one in my support and passionate belief in the fundamental rights of freedom of speech and freedom of association. With the best will in the world, I do not see how a limited requirement that notice should be given—not permission sought, but notice given—of such matters as the route and the nature of the procession in any way conflicts with freedom of speech or freedom of association.
The language used by the hon. Member for Bootle (Mr. Roberts), about tak-

ing away freedom, was simply inappropriate to a provision of this kind which requires no more than that notice of the details of the procession should be given. The hon. Gentleman said that it was unenforceable. It would, indeed, be unenforceable if what was required was something of the nature of permission. All that is said here is that notice must be given, and that if notice is not given that is an offence. I see nothing unenforceable about that. To talk about taking away freedom because there is a Bill which seeks to extend from 36 hours to three days a requirement that people should give notice to the police is, perhaps, to put it at its happiest, a reflection of how free a society we are if a matter such as that is regarded as deprivation of freedom.

Mr. John Evans: Rubbish!

Mr. Allan Roberts: As the hon. and learned Gentleman seems to be suggesting that the requirement to give notice does not take away freedom, will he tell us how it is possible to give notice of a spontaneous demonstration?

Mr. Brittan: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that point. I was coming to the question of spontaneous demonstrations, which has occupied much of the debate. It has been made quite clear, in the course of the debate, that in the past, when this provision has lain on the statute book, in Cheshire there has been no trouble with spontaneous demonstrations and no prosecutions have been brought in relation to them. The fact that the notice provision is increased from 36 hours to three days does not affect the position.

Mrs. Dunwoody: rose—

Mr. Brittan: I must elaborate this point, and I shall give way in a moment. I just want to answer the points that have been made about spontaneous demonstrations. If a demonstration is truly spontaneous, it makes no difference whether the period of notice is 36 hours or three days. In either event the spontaneous demonstration must be in breach of the law, yet there have been no prosecutions.
If anything, what is proposed in the Bill provides further protection against unreasonable prosecution in the case of


a spontaneous demonstration that has not actually occurred, and in relation to which there has been no evidence, because the promoters have indicated that they are suggesting that the Director of Public Prosecutions should give his consent before any prosecution is brought under this head. To suggest that underneath the provision that notice should be sought there lurks some sort of conspiracy among chief officers of the police to take away rights, and some lurking desire to show preference either for Friends of the Earth against trade unions or vice versa, is bordering on fantasy. I do not believe that those hazards apply.
I have spoken about the scope of the national law, but if we are to make changes nationally in the Public Order Act, there should first be careful consultation and consideration. In the meantime, it is reasonable for local authorities to seek to continue in force local powers that they consider necessary and that in each case Parliament should judge the proposals on their merits.

Mrs. Dunwoody: rose—

Mr. Brittan: I shall give way in a moment, after I have finished my next sentence. I agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Griffiths) said, that it will be preferable when these matters are considered on a national basis, as they will be in due course. However, I think that in the meantime, for local authorities in the new counties to ask to enact legislation in substantially the same form as before, with slight variations in the powers that previously existed, is not in any sense unreasonable.

Mrs. Dunwoody: The confident assumption that the hon. and learned Gentleman seems to be making, that because the powers have not been used they would never be misused, is the basis of all bad legislation. Is the hon. and learned Gentleman aware that the hon. Member for Northwich (Mr. Goodlad) was not able to quote the number of cases where there had been this sort of riotous assembly, needing this kind of notification, or to demonstrate that spontaneous demonstrations had got out of hand? Why does the hon. and learned Member think that he has any right to say that this can be done by the back door

when the Government are not prepared to bring forward changes in the Public Order Act at present?

Mr. Brittan: I cannot see how it can be doing something by the back door to seek, in effect, to re-enact, for a slightly larger area than existed in the past under comparable legislation, a power to do substantially the same thing, with a slight variation in the period of notice.
As for there being no abuse of the power, all I can say is that those present have memories, recollections and evidence from researchers which has led them to give examples of spontaneous demonstrations on a substantial scale, yet no one has given an example of a prosecution in respect of a spontaneous demonstration or procession which is regarded as being unfair or inappropriate.

Mr. Eldon Griffiths: I am grateful for what my hon. and learned Friend said about the Home Secretary giving consideration to the need for national legislation on this matter. He has very fairly said that he will need to consult and to consider the matter carefully. Perhaps I may make a suggestion. When other county council Bills come forward, as indeed they will, I suggest that my hon. and learned Friend should invite the promoters to come to the Home Office, if they wish, and to consider with his officials ways in which they can bring forward clauses of this kind within the Bill in the spirit of the national consideration that the Home Secretary has undertaken to give and to report in due course.

Mr. Brittan: I am grateful for that suggestion. The difficulty is that if one is seeking consultation with promoters of local Bills, it presupposes that one has reached a view of what the national provisions should be, and—

Mr. John Evans: rose—

Mr. Brittan: I shall not give way until I have finished my sentence. As the review on which my right hon. Friend is embarking has not been concluded, it is difficult to see the basis for doing that up to now. However, it seems to me that where local authorities are seeking to continue powers on the lines of those that already exist, it is a reasonable thing for them to do.

Mr. Tom McNally: Terms such as "consult", "consider" and "reach conclusions" are being used. However, will the Minister acknowledge that, without using emotive words such as "conspiracy", a pattern is being established right across the country which is pre-empting just the kind of careful consideration to which he is now giving lip service?

Mr. Brittan: I do not believe that it is pre-empting it, because I am certain that when the review upon which my right hon. Friend is embarking is concluded the conclusions will be put before the House and the House will have ample opportunity to decide whether it wishes to legislate at all and, if so, on what lines. Therefore, for the moment, and concerning this legislation, I think that it is right that the clause should be subject to detailed scrutiny in Committee. The Committee will wish to consider the scope of the provision, the length of notice proposed and the local need. That, indeed, is precisely the purpose of the Committee stage. But it would be wrong, and a disservice to the people of Cheshire and their elected representatives, if the motion in the names of the hon. Member for Stockport, North (Mr. Bennett) and others prevented proper democratic consideration of just these matters.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: I do not wish to make a speech in this debate. Much of the ground has been covered. However, it is most important that we should know more about what the Minister of State has just said. I welcome the fact that the Government are looking at the Public Order Act. There is no national legislation on the subject that we are discussing. Because of local government reform, what is happening is that we are being presented with the Private Bills, and there is a hotchpotch of legislation.
Other aspects of public order need to be considered in the right hon. Gentleman's consultations. The chief constable of Leicester, in whom I have great confidence, quite properly took a view about a march during the election campaign and brought in reinforcements from Norfolk and the Metropolitan police force. As a result of a change made in the law in 1936, a judgment made locally can affect the country as a whole in terms of reinforcement, and that aspect must be considered. The inspectorate and the

Home Secretary are involved. I admit that I had not considered that aspect until the election, just before I ceased holding office.

Mr. Brittan: I reassure the right hon. Gentleman that those considerations will be wholly appropriate for the review. Circumstances have changed in a variety of directions since 1936 and that is a vivid example. The review is needed precisely for that reason.

Mr. Rooker: I have a sheaf of correspondence dating from 1976 between the agents and promoters and the Home Office about the common clauses in the Bill. They did not arrive spontaneously, but followed the permission granted after a parliamentary question to my right hon. Friend the previous Home Secretary in March of this year. The Home Office is not ignorant of these matters. If the Minister cares to check, he will find more information than that provided to me.
It is correct that some of us on this side of the House have good memories. Is the Tory Party tonight operating in the same way as it did over the past few years in Opposition? It set the precedent of a major political party putting a Whip on private business. Is there a Whip tonight on Tory Members?

Mr. Brittan: I was not aware that I suggested that the Home Office was in ignorance. Nothing I have said could be interpreted as seeking to make that case, and I cannot see why the hon. Gentleman raised that point.
My right hon. and hon. Friends will vote according to their views. The Government's view is that it would be wrong and a disservice to the people of Cheshire and their elected representatives if the motion in the name of the hon. Member for Stockport, North (Mr. Bennett) and others prevented proper and democratic consideration of these matters.

9.42 p.m.

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: It is sad that we are debating the procession clause for the third time and have not achieved a satisfactory solution. The silk weavers of Macclesfield 163 years ago were able to form a procession without giving notice. They proceeded towards Manchester and only ran into difficulties when they arrived at Peterloo. They had the right to process


without giving notice, but subsequently that right has been taken away, and people in this country should have the fundamental right to demonstrate.
I am in sympathy with the argument that the police should be given as much notice as possible, and three days is not enough. Most hon. Members would not be pleased to be suddenly told that their activities planned for Sunday or Monday had to be cancelled. They would prefer a longer period of notice than three days. Those organising a demonstration, particularly if it involves large numbers, should give the police as much notice as possible.
We are in danger of getting the worst of both worlds with this clause. We are whittling down to a minimum the notice of three days which really does not help the police at all. At the same time we cause difficulties and embarrassment to those who want to organise a demonstration at very short notice about some immediate event. I believe that we should be looking at the possibility of giving the maximum possible notice of any demonstration or procession.
That is the sort of notice that the organisers give to those whom they want to turn up. If organisers aim to get 10,000 people, and send out posters and leaflets to that effect, it is reasonable that they should consult and discuss with the police when they begin to draw up their plans. But at the same time if, because of the immediate urgency of the event, only very short notice can be given, telephoning round to people and asking them in turn to telephone, or if one goes round knocking on doors, again one should be entitled to give the police that sort of short notice. That is the kind of compromise that would be most satisfactory. We should try to persuade people organising demonstrations to give as much notice as possible. As many hon. Members have said, the vast majority of people who organise demonstrations give a long period of notice for their own convenience and the convenience of the police. There is no problem with the majority.
The problem arises when one lays down that a particular length of notice should be given. If it is very short notice—like the three days proposed—it would still

cause the police difficulty in organisation. At the same time it would cause problems for those who are organising the demonstration. It also makes impossible the counter-procession or counter-demonstration.
In all the discussions that I have had with the police they have made it absolutely clear that if one group of people plan to have a procession that is bound to cause controversy, they would much prefer that someone organises a counter-procession which takes place away from the first one, than that people simply line the route of the original procession and cause disruption and difficulties.
As long as there is any time limit, it is possible for those organising the first demonstration to give the absolute minimum time, and having done that they make it absolutely impossible for anyone to organise a legal counter-procession or demonstration. The inevitable result is that this forces any group of people who want to express disgust or horror for the original demonstration not to do it in an organised way but merely to line the route to jeer and shout or, unfortunately, in many cases take more serious action. The very inclusion of a time limit makes the maintenance of public order that much more difficult.
I turn to the question of the spontaneous demonstration. It is absolutely clear that we cannot define a spontaneous demonstration. Although the promoters have claimed that they do not want to include spontaneous demonstrations, it is quite clear that in fact they are included. As soon as one person suggests that people should line up in threes, or go to one side of the road, that person is starting to organise that group. Because he has not given notice he is, under this Bill, committing an offence. It has also been suggested that those who commit that kind of offence are unlikely to be prosecuted. That is a very unsatisfactory way for the law to operate. It has been said repeatedly that there has been no problem in Cheshire with groups of people who have not given the old minimum amount of notice and who were not prosecuted. But surely we do not want the police to decide which laws they administer and which laws they do not.
First of all, I do not think that it is the job of the police to decide which laws of the land they employ and which they


do not. But immediately they begin to be involved in deciding that they will administer the law in one case rather than in another, they start to appear, whether it is true or not, to have political biases. If they do not intervene because somebody is organising a demonstration in favour of, say, blood sports but intervene when somebody is organising a procession against blood sports, they appear to be taking a political stance.

Mr. Rooker: May I draw my hon. Friend's attention to a law which was on the statute book for many years but not enforced, and which when it was eventually enforced cause a general strike? I refer to a case which occurred in Australia. When a company refused to discuss a wage claim, the workers sent for the trade union officials. Because it was found that the discussion involved more than three people, that obscure law—to the effect that one could not address a meeting of more than three people unless one had police permission—was invoked. As a result, three union leaders were arrested, and there was a general strike in Australia. That was a good example of why one should not have laws which can be spontaneously enforced to allow matters to get out of control. My hon. Friend might care to develop that argument.

Mr. Bennett: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for illustrating that problem in deciding whether to exercise the law.

Mrs. Elaine Kellett-Bowman: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that there are thousands of laws on the statute book at present which have never been tested in the courts? In other words, thousands of laws, which exist with no ill intent on anybody's part, have never been tested in the courts.

Mr. Bennett: If that is the case, I do not see why we should now try to put forward yet another law. I am not sure whether the hon. Lady is suggesting that those laws should be abolished, or whether one should add to the statute book. I realise that there are lawyers who have a vested interest in extending the number of statutes so that the ordinary person cannot understand them.
I believe it is important that the individual who is thinking of organising a demonstration should know where he or

she stands. The matter should not be dealt with on the basis that the police or the Director of Public Prosecutions should decide whether to prosecute. Most people want to be law abiding and before they take action they want to know how the law stands. They want to take such action in order to keep the law rather than break it, and they hope that they will not be prosecuted for it.
The promoters are suggesting that we should include this provision to make it illegal to carry out the demonstration or conduct the procession, but provided that one has not caused a nuisance there will be no prosecution. That surely is a bad situation in respect of the law, because the individual should know where he stands. It is a different matter for people who are members of big organisations. If one is a member of a substantial trade union and is used to political activity, it is easy to take that kind of risk. But most of the people who organise such processions have never organised anything else in their lives.

Mr. McNally: Will my hon. Friend guide me through my perplexity? The Minister called for national consultation, and my right hon. Friend the former Home Secretary called for regional and local examination of the law in such cases. We have already established that Cheshire is not likely to be the start of the next revolution. Has my hon. Friend in his examination of the problem seen a national pattern in some of the legislation that is now coming before the House? If he has noted a national pattern, will he say whether it does not directly contradict the kind of assurances which have been given by Ministers to the House?

Mr. Bennett: I was concerned that there appeared to be some conspiracy among groups of people who got together and suggested that the period should be seven days. They put that view forward not because they believed that it should be seven days but because they believed that if they asked for such a period a bargaining process would take place and they would end up with a period of three days.
That was an unfortunate element. The advantage of having national laws is that people move about the country. It would


be better if someone moving from Stock-port to Wilmslow knew that if he wanted to organise a demonstration or procession the same rules would apply in both localities. At the moment, they do not. It is possible that those who want to cause a nuisance will pick the areas of local authorities which do not have restrictions on demonstrations and processions.

Mr. John Evans: My hon. Friend has raised some important points, particularly the point that people in this country are basically law-abiding citizens who want to know and understand the law in order that they can obey it. Is my hon. Friend aware of the parallel between what we have discussed tonight and the law on picketing? We have been told that concessions will be given and that the Director of Public Prosecutions will be brought in and look upon particular demonstrations sympathetically. In other words, it depends upon the attitude of the chief constable or chief superintendent in any district. The Government constantly talk about the law on picketing, but my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker) and I attempted to clarify the law on picketing in the Employment Protection Bill of the last Parliament—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member is not making an intervention—it is developing into a speech.

Mr. Bennett: I appreciate that the law should be clear in order that the individual should know it before he embarks upon organising any demonstration. The responsibility for a demonstration or procession is laid on the individual in this Bill. If the promoters are looking for

ways to meet our objectives they should consider amending the provision to cover persons or a group. The past has shown that it is best that a person with experience should organise a demonstration.

There are many instances where trades councils in a particular area have been responsible for organising a demonstration or procession. That is a collective responsibility. Under the Act an individual will have to be nominated to be responsible for the behaviour of the vast majority on the procession. It is difficult for an individual to accept responsibility for the actions of others. A small concession would be to allow a corporate body or group to take on the duty if it is necessary.

There is a strong argument for exempting a small demonstration or procession from giving notice. Some of the promoters have been prepared to look at the question of exempting a demonstration or procession involving less than 200 people because the number of police required is very small. Not only that, but the amount of traffic disruption is small. Two hundred people walking down the street take up about the same space as three double-decker buses.

If someone wants to organise a small demonstration or procession, it is silly that he should have to give notice in this formal way. People in Cheshire who have been giving such notice have been told by the district office—

Mr. David Hunt: rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.

Question put, That the Question be now put:—

The House divided: Ayes 164, Noes 41.

Division No. 17]
AYES
[10.00 p.m.


Adley, Robert
Bowden, Andrew
Chalker, Mrs. Lynda


Aitken, Jonathan
Boyson, Dr. Rhodes
Churchill, W. S.


Alexander, Richard
Braine, Sir Bernard
Clark, William (Croydon South)


Ancram, Michael
Bright, Graham
Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)


Arnold, Tom
Brittan, Leon
Clegg, Walter


Aspinwall, Jack
Brocklebank-Fowler, Christopher
Colvin, Michael


Atkins, Robert (Preston North)
Brooke, Hon. Peter
Cope, John


Baker, Kenneth (St. Marylebone)
Brotherton, Michael
Costain, A. P.


Baker, Nicholas (North Dorset)
Brown, Michael (Brigg &amp; Sc'thorpe)
Crouch, David


Bendall, Vivian
Browne, John (Winchester)
Dean, Paul (North Somerset)


Benyon, Thomas (Abingdon)
Bruce-Gardyne, John
Dickens, Geoffrey


Berry, Hon. Anthony
Bryan, Sir Paul
Dorrell, Stephen


Best, Keith
Budgen, Nick
Dunn, Robert (Dartford)


Bevan, David Gilroy
Bulrner, Esmond
Durant, Tony


Blackburn, John
Butler, Hon. Adam
Dykes, Hugh


Boscawen, Hon. Robert
Cadbury, Jocelyn
Eden, Rt. Hon. Sir John


Bottomley, peter (Woolwich West)
Carlisle, Rt. Hon. Mark (Runcorn)
Edwards, Rt. Hon. N. (Pembroke)




Emery, Peter
Mackay, John (Argyll)
Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge-Br'hills)


Eyre, Reginald
Madel, David
Shersby, Michael


Fenner, Mrs. Peggy
Marlow, Antony
Silvester, Fred


Finsberg, Geoffrey
Marten, Neil (Banbury)
Smith, Dudley (War, and Leam'ton)


Fisher, Sir Nigel
Mates, Michael
Spicer, Jim (West Dorset)


Fletcher-Cooke, Charles
Mather, Carol
Spicer, Michael (S Worcestershire)


Fookes, Miss Janet
Mawby, Ray
Sproat, Iain


Fowler, Rt. Hon. Norman
Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin
Stanbrook, Ivor


Fox, Marcus
Mayhew, Patrick
Steen, Anthony


Galbraith, Hon. T. G. D.
Meyer, Sir Anthony
Stevens, Martin


Garel-Jones, Tristan
Miller, Hal (Bromsgrove &amp; Redditch)
Stewart, John (East Renfrewshire)


Glyn, Dr. Alan
Miscampbell, Norman
Stradling Thomas, J.


Goodlad, Alastair
Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)
Tebbit, Norman


Gow, Ian
Monro, Hector
Temple-Morris, Peter


Gray, Hamish
Montgomery, Fergus
Thomas, Rt. Hon. Peter (Hendon S.)


Greenway, Harry
Moore, John
Thompson, Donald


Griffiths, Eldon (Bury St Edmunds)
Morrison, Hon. Charles (Devizes)
Thorne, Neil (Ilford South)


Gryils, Michael
Morrison, Hon. Peter (City of Chester)
Thornton, George


Hannam, John
Murphy, Christopher
Townsend, Cyril D. (Bexleyheath)


Haselhurst, Alan
Needham, Richard
van Straubenzee, W. R.


Hawksley, Warren
Neubert, Michael
Vaughan, Dr. Gerard


Henderson, Barry
Newton, Tony
Viggers, Peter


Hicks, Robert
Normanton, Tom
Waddington, David


Hill, James
Onslow, Cranley
Wakeham, John


Hunt, David (Wirral)
Osborn, John
Waldegrave, Hon. William


Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)
Page, Rt. Hon. R. Graham (Crosby)
Wall, Patrick


Jenkin, Rt. Hon. Patrick
Patten, Christopher (Bath)
Waller, Gary


Jopling, Rt. Hon. Michael
Patten, John (Oxford)
Ward, John


Kellett-Bowman, Mrs. Elaine
Peyton, Rt. Hon. John
Watson, John


King, Rt. Hon. Tom
Price, David (Eastleigh)
Wells, P. Bowen (Hert'rd &amp; Stev'nage)


Knox, David
Rathbone, Tim
Wheeler, John


Lamont, Norman
Rees-Davies, W. R.
Whitney, Raymond


Lawrence, Ivan
Rhodes James, Robert
Wilkinson, John


Lee, John
Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon
Winterton, Nicholas


Le Marchant, Spencer
Ridley, Hon. Nicholas
Young, Sir George (Acton)


Lester, Jim (Beeston)
Ridsdale, Julian



Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)
Rossi, Hugh
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Macfarlane, Neil
Sainsbury, Hon. Timothy
Sir. Nicholas Bonsor and


MacGregor, John
Shelton, William (Streatham)
Mr. Barry Porter.




NOES


Alton, David
Hamilton, W. W. (Central Fife)
Prescott, John


Anderson, Donald
Holland, Stuart (L'beth, Vauxhall)
Race, Reg


Atkinson, Norman (H'gey, Tott'ham)
Kerr, Russell
Rees, Rt. Hon. Merlyn (Leeds South)


Bennett, Andrew (Stockport N.)
Kinnock, Neil
Richardson, Miss. Jo


Booth, Rt. Hon. Albert
Lomond, James
Rooker, J. W.


Brown, Hugh D. (Provan)
Leadbitter, Ted
Ross, Stephen (Isle of Wight)


Brown, Ronald W. (Hackney S.)
Leighton, Ronald
Skinner, Dennis


Callaghan, Jim (Middleton &amp; P.)
McCartney, Hugh
Snape, Peter


Dormand, J. D.
McDonald, Dr. Oonagh
Soley, Clive


Dunwoody, Mrs. Gwyneth
Marshall, Dr. Edmund (Goole)
Spriggs, Lesile


Eastham, Ken
Maynard, Miss. Joan
Young, David (Bolton East)


Evans, John (Newton)
Mikardo, Ian



Fitt, Gerard
Orme, Rt. Hon. Stanley
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


George, Bruce
Pendry, Tom
Mr. Allan Roberts and


Grant, George (Morpeth)
Powell, Raymond (Ogmore)
Mr. Tom McNally.

Question accordingly agreed to.

Question, That the Bill be now read a Second time, put accordingly and agreed to.

Bill read a Second time and committed.

Orders of the Day — BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Ordered,
That, at this day's sitting, the second Motion in the name of Mr. Andrew Bennett relating

to the Cheshire County Council Bill [Lords] may be proceeded with, though opposed, until a quarter of an hour before Eleven o'clock.—[Mr. Jopling.]

Orders of the Day — CHESHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL BILL [Lords] (By Order)

Mr. Speaker: Does the hon. Member for Stockport, North (Mr. Bennett) wish to move the Instruction?

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: No, Sir.

Orders of the Day — GREATER LONDON COUNCIL (GENERAL POWERS) [MONEY]

Order read for resuming adjourned debate on Question [14 June],
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to confer further powers upon the Greater London Council and other authorities, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of any sums required for the remuneration of members of the staff commission to be established by the Secretary of State in pursuance of that Act or to defray any expenses of that commission.—[Lord James Douglas-Hamilton.]

10.14 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg): The House gave the Bill—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. Hon. Members seem to be unaware that the Minister is addressing the House.

Mr. Finsberg: The House gave this Private Bill its Second Reading on 12 June. Clause 8 of the Bill seeks power to establish a staff commission. Its role would be to look after the interests of the GLC staff involved when the property with which they deal is transferred from the GLC to the London boroughs and to some district councils outside London. There is no doubt that these staff should be transferred, and it is generally agreed that a statutory staff commission appointed by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is essential if the transfers are to go smoothly.
There are many precedents for staff commissions of this sort. For example, they were appointed to deal with the transfers resulting from the local government reorganisations of 1965 and 1974, as well as those associated with the current transfer of housing from new town development corporations to new town district councils. In these previous cases, the Government have accepted that they should foot the bill for the establishment and operation of the staff commissions. We see no reason to depart from this practice now.
The power enabling the Government to meet this cost is sought in the money resolution which we are now debating. I ask the House to approve this resolu-

tion. With leave of the House, Mr. Speaker, I shall seek to catch your eye again at the end of this brief debate if there are any points to answer.

10.16 p.m.

Mr. Ronald W. Brown: When we debated this Bill, I said that I was dissatisfied with the proposals and put a number of questions. Although the Minister did his best to satisfy me, I was not satisfied. I felt that the only way that I could enlarge on the matter was by blocking the money resolution so as to have this short debate in an attempt to get more information. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for offering to clarify some points.
In the previous debate, I drew attention to the fact that the New Towns Commission was still in being and was coming to the end of its work. Since it had had a wide experience of the transfer of houses, land and other facilities in the new towns, it seemed sensible that it should be asked to carry on and use its invaluable experience. I should like to know why the Commission is not being called on to continue.
I am totally opposed to these transfers anyway. The tenants of the GLC and of the boroughs, certainly in Hackney, will not be able to be rehoused in any other part of London. They will have no possibility of a transfer. We are already experiencing severe problems in getting families transferred. Houses are being kept empty and their state of repair is deplorable. We can already see examples of what will happen when the Bill is put into effect.
The House must be satisfied that this public expenditure is right and proper. When the Government are cutting public expenditure, nothing is safe. In my own area, for example, it is proposed to close two hospitals to save just £2 million, notwithstanding all the concern and the problems facing my constituents.
The Conservative chairman of the housing committee of the GLC is apparently authorised to make unlimited offers to transferee authorities to take these properties over. We are told that it runs into tens of millions of pounds. How ironic that we close two hospitals in my constituency to save £2 million while at the same time the Government are able


to authorise the expenditure of tens of millions of pounds on this exercise of transferring homes which will not mean one extra home for any family. The Government are prepared to trade the health and welfare and the lives of my constituents for their measly £2 million, yet they are able and willing to authorise this high expenditure on transfers. In Hackney the transfer will be a continuing burden on the ratepayers.
There are in Hackney 26,000 GLC properties. I intervened in the speech of the hon. Member for Ravensboume (Mr. Hunt) when we debated the general powers Bill to ask how many GLC estates he had. He said that he had 760 units of accommodation. We have 26,000, the majority of them flats. The people living in them will never be able to move out of them. They will have no opportunity because the 760 units in Bromley will continue to be occupied by Bromley people. We know that this is a fact. It therefore seems quite improper for me to assist this transfer in any way.
We are told by the Minister that the three commissioners to be appointed, Messrs. Vine, Bodell and Dryden, will be paid. We see on today's Order Paper that the House is merely to "authorise the payment". How much payment? Why is it that the House is not told? I cannot believe that it is possible to evaluate how much can be saved by closing two hospitals in my constituency yet impossible to evaluate how much money we are to pay to Messrs. Vine, Bodell and Dryden. We are entitled to know how much we are to pay them in expenses.
How can it be argued that this House is carrying out its function of scrutinising expenditure if we simply accept the type of blank cheque that we see on the Order Paper? How hollow ring the words of the Chancellor who spoke of the need for financial control. Here we are being asked to authorise expenditure, yet the precise amount appears nowhere. It did not appear in the general powers Bill and it does not appear tonight in the money resolution. It is deplorable that we are being asked to approve this document when the Government clearly have no idea how much this exercise will cost.
I am opposed to this resolution because I believe it is totally unnecessary. It fails to say how much money is involved and is, in effect, an open-ended cheque. For these reasons, I object to it most strongly.

10.24 p.m.

Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg: With the leave of the House, I will reply. The hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Brown) has asked a few questions. I believe that two were relevant and I shall gladly give him as much information about them as I can. I told the hon. Gentleman when we debated the general powers Bill that the bulk of his argument was against the principle of transfer and that that principle was not in the Bill and is not in the money resolution. He has done his calculations concerning Hackney I am glad to hear that he admits that even the London borough of Hackney will ultimately take the housing being offered by the GLC, which is a great advance.

Mr. Ronald W. Brown: I did not admit that.

Mr. Finsberg: The hon. Gentleman may not have admitted that, but the fact is that the London Labour Party has had to break ranks on this.
The hon. Gentleman asked about the use of the staff commission for the new towns. He said that it was running down, he wondered whether the membership could be used, and he then named at least two people who are connected with the new towns. I do not deny that we are hoping to make use of the expertise of those gentlemen. I believe that this would be very welcome, and I doubt that NALGO, for example, would be at all unhappy at their use. Indeed, I believe that it is purely in the interests of the staff that this is being done.
I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not feel constrained to put the staff at risk, which is what would happen if the money resolution were not passed. There are other ways of dealing with the matter, without a money resolution, but I am sure that he would not want to jeopardise the position of the staff.
The sale or transfer of the houses is not in any way affected by the money resolution.

Mr. Stuart Holland: Will the Minister kindly clarify one of the


provisions in the Bill—clause 7 on page 5—relating to the parking of vehicles? It is a problem of considerable concern in my constituency that vehicles parked on GLC estates do not come under the normal control of the Metropolitan Police in relation to parking offences. Could he explain what that provision is about?

Mr. Finsberg: Unfortunately, if I tried to do so I should be ruled out of order by the Chair, since that is not covered by any part of the money resolution. The opportunity to raise that matter was available when we had our three-hour debate on the general powers Bill. However, I am sure that if the hon. Gentleman tables a question the appropriate Minister will be delighted to give him an answer, or the GLC would be glad to give him an answer. If he cares to write to me, I shall pass the matter on to the right quarter with the greatest pleasure.
I do not propose to discuss the allegations about hospital closures in the constituency of the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch because I do not know the facts. All I know is that it was his late unlamented Government who tried to murder the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital and it is my Government who are trying to save it. So in regard to hospitals I am satisfied with the record.
There is one matter on which I can. I think, give the hon. Gentleman a helpful answer. With reference to cost he said that it was wrong—I think he said "scandalous"—that he did not know the amount of money involved. He has been in the House longer than I have. If he casts his eye over money resolutions he will find that none of them gives a figure. However, I am delighted to give him a figure on this occasion. The estimated cost to fall upon the Exchequer as a result of the operation of the staff commission is approximately £80,000 per year. I think that the people of London would regard that as very good value.
I think that those are the only relevant matters on which I can help the House. With those few words, I commend the money resolution for approval.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to confer further powers upon the Greater London Council and other authorities, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of any sums required for the remuneration of members of the staff commission to be established by the Secretary of State in pursuance of that Act or to defray any expenses of that commission.

Orders of the Day — HOUSING (PETERLEE)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Wakeham.]

10.29 p.m.

Mr. J. D. Dormand: I think that the Minister is aware of the general problem that I intend to raise, but for the sake of thoroughness I shall go over the whole ground in the quarter of an hour or so at my disposal.
The northern part of my constituency consists of a number of villages and the new town of Peterlee. I mention that in preface because Peterlee is the focal point of this part of my constituency. It provides housing accommodation now for almost 30,000 people. It provides many of the jobs for this part of the area, and it certainly provides most of the social and recreational facilities. Some years ago it was almost impossible to obtain a house outside the town of Peterlee. I hope that that gives the setting for the main point that I shall later develop.
The problem that I raise is that many houses—as many as 4,000, it has been estimated—through faulty design, poor construction and, I understand, inferior materials are now virtually unfit for habitation. I need not tell the Minister that that causes great inconvenience and discomfort to the tenants. It also means that there has been great expenditure by those living in the houses so affected. Thousands of pounds have been spent.
I am not concerned with an inquest. Perhaps there is a story to be told and written about the circumstances that have arisen, but my main purpose is to ensure that the houses are put right before the onset of next winter.
The amount involved—the Minister will be hearing about it shortly from the Easington district council if he has not heard already—is about £15 million. There has been much in the North-Eastern press about the matter as well as


broadcasts on television and radio. I have heard £40 million mentioned, but £15 million seems a realistic assessment. I concede that that is a considerable sum, but it must be put into context. It is small in relation to the problems.
It will come as no surprise to the Minister to know that I dealt with his predecessor for several months. My hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich (Mr. Barnett) could not have been more helpful or sympathetic. I have to say that, too, for the staff of his office. I do not think that I am revealing any secret when I say that the Labour Government had come to a conclusion prior to the general election. The council would have received an adequate grant to cover most of the work. It is most unfortunate in more ways than one that we now have a new Government.
I hope that there will be continuity of thinking. There has been some delay because the former Government sought the views of the Association of District Councils. As we know, the houses in the new towns were taken over by the district councils on 1 April 1978. The houses are now their responsibility. It was inevitable that some councils would object to the condition of some of the houses.
It was proper and understandable that the Government of the day should consider the picture as a whole. It is important that the then Minister did not preclude any local authority from submitting proposals and claims for financial assistance unilaterally. Easington district council did that and did it extremely well.
I have been worried for some time about the response of the Department of the Environment, which laid down certain conditions in response to the representations that have been made by the ADC. It is important that the conditions should be placed on the record. Therefore, I shall quote the second paragraph of the letter dated 19 March 1979 from the Department to the secretary of the new towns committee of the Association of District Councils. It states:
We have considered the Association's representations but I think I should make it clear at the outset that there are certain categories of work which we cannot regard as eligible for grant. These are as follows: (a) matters covered by byelaws or building regulations current when the buildings were approved;

(b) renewal or replacement to outworn or outdated items of equipment or services; (c) any form of improvement; (d) normal maintenance. All these are, in our view, clearly outside the scope of Section 10 grant.
On the surface that seems reasonable, but when councils have discussed detail they have found that it is capable of the widest interpretation and might result in no local authority receiving anything. In other words, the Department would not pay out a penny to help in what are, frankly, quite critical circumstances.
At this point I would support the Association of District Councils by saying two things—first, that the removal of basic design faults should be admitted in all cases and, secondly, that where dwellings are unsatisfactory by reason of faulty construction or bad workmanship this should be a proper subject for claim. I submit to the Minister that that is a fair compromise on the kind of conditions that were laid down and that were based on the paragraph I have just read.
My main plea is that this is a special case. I do not pretend that there are not similar problems in other new towns; that is manifestly so. However, I challenge the Minister to name one new town which has this problem on this scale. I look forward to hearing his comments on that challenge.
The evidence was prepared in great detail by Easington district council and submitted to the Minister. I am not sure whether he has yet had time to consider it in detail. I see that he is shaking his head. Frankly, it is such a huge file that I can understand that, as a new boy at the Department—if I may phrase it in that way—he will have had many other things to do, but it is essential reading. He will see the purport of my case embodied in those documents.
In the circumstances it simply is not possible for the local authority to provide this amount of money. I cannot overstress—I hope that the Minister will pay attention to this—that the work must be completed this winter. We who live in the North-East have winters such as are not experienced in any other part of the country. Last winter we were snowbound when in the South the sun was shining. I live up there and I know exactly what it is like. The tenants of these houses in this new town simply cannot endure another winter such as the last one in the sort of conditions that I am talking about


tonight. The need is urgent, the case desperate and, in my estimation, unanswerable.
If he has not done so already, the Minister will be getting a request from Easington district council to receive a deputation. I know that he is a sympathetic man and I hope that he will readily agree to meet the deputation. In an Adjournment debate of this kind it is not possible to do more than outline the main points of the case. The detailed submissions, which I concede are necessary to convince a Department and a Minister, can be made only in a face-to-face meeting with the councillors and officers present. I hope that he will receive that request within the next few days.
I conclude by congratulating the Minister on his appointment. It is an onerous and an important one. There is a great deal of important work to be done. When the hon. Gentleman was an Opposition Back Bencher, only about six weeks ago, he had an enviable reputation. He was regarded as able and as knowledgeable, particularly in local government affairs. But, above all, he was regarded as being very flexible in debates—I mean this sincerely—and very humane. What I am worried about is that now that he is in the clutches of the Iron Lady he might not be so flexible and humane.
I urge the hon. Gentleman not to accept the doctrinaire policy that the present Government have already adopted, and have made widely known, of indiscriminate cutting of public expenditure regardless of the merits of the case. In the short time that I have had, I hope that I have convinced the hon. Gentleman that, at the very least, my case is worthy of very substantial and immediate investigation.
A decent home is a fundamental requirement of civilised living. I hope that the Minister will respond to my plea and respond very quickly on what we in our area regard as a most important matter.

10.41 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg): I start by thanking the hon. Member for Easington (Mr. Dormand) for his kind words. I shall do my best to make certain that they do not influence the reply that I am about to give him.
The hon. Member is perfectly right in saying that no new town has experienced the problem on the same scale. I have not read the entire file—also a perfectly fair comment of the hon. Member—but I have read more than enough to be able, I hope, to give the hon. Member an answer that may not leave him too dissatisfied.
The House, certainly, and the hon. Member's constituents will be grateful to him for raising this subject tonight, because, as he rightly said, people value decent housing. It was, after all, an important plank in the programme that we put to the country and which contributed significantly to the massive endorsement of our policies that we received from the electorate just seven weeks ago.
It is right to pay tribute to what the Peterlee development corporation has done. I can assure the hon. Member that the comparatively small cuts that we have made should have little, if any, effect upon Peterlee's industrial programme this year. The corporation deserves great credit for its outstanding success, with the resultant increase of 1,000 jobs in the past two years.
I turn to the hon. Member's representations on behalf of Easington for financial aid for remedial work needed to the estates that the council took over last year from the Peterlee development corporation—assistance additional to the fairly substantial tapering grant that the authority is receiving already from the Department under section 10 of the New Towns (Amendment) Act 1976.
The hon. Member asked that the Government should stand by "a commitment" by the previous Administration to pay additional grant. Let me first examine exactly what that "commitment" was. The only details of the Labour Government's offer were set out in a letter sent to the Association of District Councils on 19 March. That letter did not in any way specify the level of assistance, the proportion of expenditure to be met by grant, nor indeed did it state at all clearly the nature of the work that might qualify for aid. However, the letter did spell out the kind of work that would not rank for grant, as the hon. Member has very rightly reminded the House. It was not a very forthcoming letter after so long a period of gestation.
But my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, in the debate on the Address, has already drawn attention to many instances of indecision and inaction on important matters of housing policy by the former Government Ministers during their recent tenure of office.
Having pressed the previous Government for so long—as I gather that the hon. Gentleman admitted at the end of March during a BBC television discussion in the North-East—he could perhaps be forgiven had his mind turned to that particular issue on the occasion of my right hon. Friend's speech during the debate on the Address.
While inviting claims within prescribed and constricted rules, the Department's letter to the ADC went on to stress the favourable outstanding loan debt terms on which the new town's housing had been transferred to the local authorities. Those terms reflected what was called the "warts and all" basis of the general settlement. That was the clear intention of the 1976 Act. The hon. Gentleman knows that better than I, because he was a Whip at that time.
On 26 June 1976 on the occasion of the Bill's Third Reading, the right hon. Member for Deptford (Mr. Silkin) told the House that the transfer terms for the first generation new towns would:
enable the local authorities to increase their housing stock at capital costs of from one-third to one-half of the true capital cost." [Official Report, 26 June 1976; Vol. 913, c. 627.]
For Easington, the total acquisition costs of the Peterlee housing amounted to just under £2,900 per dwelling, which is a derisory sum by today's standards. That low price reflects the fact that much of the Peterlee housing was built more than 15 years ago. I do not think that if any of us bought for less than £3,000 a house more than 15 years old we should expect it to be "as new".
At this stage let me put the Hon. Gentleman out of his misery. When we took office we made it clear that as far as we were able we would honour genuine commitments that may have been entered into by our predecessors. As I explained, I have considerable doubts about the true meaning and extent of the offer that was given to the ADC. The qualifications read out by the hon. Gentleman and to

which reference was made make that clear.
I will ask the Department to give fresh consideration to the points that the hon. Gentleman has made and reopen discussions with ADC strictly on the basis of the earlier limited proposal made to it. That does not mean that the local authority claims will by any means be met in full. It follows that any additional works put in hand following the discussions will have to be fully contained within the overall new town's local authority housing programme That means compensating savings elsewhere.

Mr. Dormand: Will the Minister assure me that the reappraisal will be set in hand immediately, for the reason that I gave?

Mr. Finsberg: It is more complicated than that, but I shall try to help the hon. Gentleman. I said that there would have to be compensating savings elsewhere. In connection with the letter that the hon. Gentleman says that Easington is sending to the Department, if Easington has now written asking for a deputation to be received, that will obviously be carefully taken into account. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will feel that there would be little purpose in seeing that deputation while the general negotiations for the ADC take place.
I suggest that the council re-examines its own claim and resubmits it within those items for which the Department has already said that grant would be payable. That means that it must exclude the items where the Department has said that grant would not be payable. I put it in that rather convoluted way because I want the hon. Gentleman to understand that I am trying to be as flexible as I can within the terms of correspondence already sent by one of his colleagues. Obviously I have not been able to see the background notes to that particular saga.
I mentioned earlier the price. It is right to say something else about the transfer of new town houses, which may be of assistance to the House. We have never been against the principle of housing transfer for local authorities. What has happened in the hon. Gentleman's constituency shows that there is bipartisan support on that.
However, the sooner new towns become ordinary towns the better. The hon. Gentleman and I are not divided on that point. The Conservative Party has made that point of view clear on many occasions. At every stage during the debates on the 1976 Act we argued that tenants in the public sector aspire to own their own homes. There are many such tenants in the new towns, as there are in every local authority area. Those tenants are capable of buying at once and should be given the opportunity to do so. My hon. Friends the Members for Basildon (Mr. Proctor), for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow) and Northampton, South (Mr. Morris), for Peterborough (Dr. Mawhinney), for Hertford and Stevenage (Mr. Wells) and for Welwyn and Hatfield (Mr. Murphy) are indebted to the Labour Government for not having learnt that lesson.
The Department will gladly consider any evidence that the local authority can put before us. Easington is not the only new town with this problem. Therefore, negotiations must continue with the Association of District Councils. However, I am not clear about the Labour Government's former intentions. I do not know how far down the path of additional grants they were prepared to go. The documentation available to me is not clear and the generous terms on which the housing was handed over clouds the issue.
I repeat what the hon. Gentleman has said about the wording of the letter that was sent to the ADC in March. By its reply, the ADC understood that letter. The letter stated that the four categories could not be covered. Flexible though I would like the situation to be, I do not believe that it would be possible to reopen the categories. It is self-evident that they should not be covered by a fresh examination.
That does not mean that other matters cannot be covered. I cannot tell the hon. Gentleman how quickly a decision will be reached. If Easington's letter gives us the information that we seek we shall hold talks with the ADC in parallel. When a formula has been agreed with the ADC we shall examine urgently the problems of the authority that the hon. Gentleman has raised.
I hope that the hon. Gentleman believes that the Government will examine the matter sympathetically—not just because he has raised it in a manner the House expects, in that he has given the facts as fully as possible, but because, if possible, we want people not to suffer the conditions that he described, of a bad winter like that of last year. It was not only the North-East that suffered from heavy snow; some of my friends in East Anglia were snowed up for five days. They did not find it helpful to have a friendly wave from above by the "Minister for Snow" flying in a helicopter. That did not produce the sunshine.
I do not believe that I can give the hon. Gentleman more information on the point. I hope that he will use his influence in the matter. Easington council, like every other local authority, has been given wide powers in advance of the "right to buy" legislation that we intend to introduce. The authorities can sell the houses they control at generous discounts below the current market value. Sales of the former Peterlee houses to tenants who wish to buy their homes, even at a discount, would be financially advantageous to the council—given the amount it paid for the dwellings and its need to finance remedial work elsewhere.
I urge the council strongly to exercise its sales power to the full, in its own interests, as well as in the interests of its tenants. If it does not, the only people who will suffer are the tenants. We have inherited inflation from the hon. Gentleman's Government and if he does not use his considerable charm and influence on his local authority the tenants will suffer because of the authority's dogma.
If the hon. Gentleman still feels, after the ADC negotiations and after we have been able to consider a formula that might apply to Easington, that a deputation is needed, I shall be delighted to receive it. I hope, however, that by that time we shall have cleared the way and he will not feel it necessary to bring a deputation.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at five minutes to Eleven o'clock.